Landstill is one of the premier control decks in the Legacy format. It is a control deck that can easily be customized for specific environments. This has been proven across multiple environments in varied locations. This deck is one of the more forgiving control decks due to the fact that it has the ability to support board sweepers to get rid of any problem permanents that may land on the table.

Through the years Landstill has gone through many incarnations.

Landstill in its original form (from the old format) can be found here:
http://mtgthesource.com/cgi-bin....82;st=0

With the transition to the new format, it is only lacking Mana Drain, while a decent blow to the deck, still allowed it to function with the replacement Counterspell.

Shortly after the format had changed the deck was adjusted to accommodate the loss of Drain and added a new card that is tailored for the deck: Crucible of Worlds. These updates were discussed here:
http://mtgthesource.com/cgi-bin....=4;st=0

Onto the latest build. This deck has gone through many adjustments and variations to fit into the new environment. It has had to adjust for the transition of the meta due to the changes to the format in September. This is the build that will be discussed in this thread.

I will leave out the obvious (ie. Standstill, Manlands, Wasteland, STP, etc..) as they can be found in previous threads.

Fact or Fiction: Excellent and powerful draw. Fact or Fictions re-entering into the format was a good boost for control decks and any other deck that can afford to splash for it. It has the problem of being on the higher end of the mana curve for the deck making running a full set a nuisance at times. 2 in the maindeck has been a good number as drawing them in the first few turns can be quite cumbersome.

Wrath of God: With the format swaying towards agro decks, Wrath of God was a natural inclusion. One of its main advantages is that it allows you to let the opponent to overextend and then generate an extreme advantage by casting this sweeper.

Akroma’s Vengence: This may be the most controversial card in the maindeck. It has come into being, after agro started adjusting to Nevinyrral’s Disk by running artifact destruction spells. This sorcery sweeper can really be devastating to the opponent. When compared to Disk, it has the inherent disadvantage of being a turn slower, but it does, on the plus side, have the option of using the turn it is drawn.

Disenchant: I don’t need to explain this card too much as it is one of the best utility cards printed. It has a use against most decks in the format currently and is rarely dead. It is just another form of removal that this deck is highly dependant on.

Brainstorm: This is one of the best cards for its cost and effect. It doesn’t generate any card advantage, but the card quality that it allows for is outstanding. It will let you find the needed removal/counter that is appropriate for the situation. It also smoothes out a lot of early hands to make the early game go a lot better.

Decree of Justice: With the rise in popularity in this deck, Decree is an obvious choice for the mirror match. It is an amazing “surprise” blocker against a lot of decks as well. It has the disadvantage of being highly expensive to generate tokens, but it also serves as a late game win condition.

Eternal Dragon: A card I was very skeptical of at first, but after much testing I agreed that this card is well fit for the deck. Its main function in the deck is to help keep the mana base consistent by searching for lands (which it does nicely under Standstill), but it also has the option of becoming another late game finisher.

Cards not included:
Nevinyrral’s Disk: This is the card the original build of Landstill was based around. With the decks changes, Disk is a lot harder to protect for the turn that it is required to become active. Aggro decks have adjusted to prepair for a Disk hitting the table and getting rid of it before it is ready to blow. It did allow you the option of sweeping the board at instant speed when it was active, which is a noticeable loss, but it is out weighed with the replacement cards for disk (Vengence/Wrath)

Stifle: This card is an excellent hoser to certain combo decks and provides a lot of utility. It has a use against almost any deck in the format and is rarely dead. This card can still be used in various metagames as it is very good against many decks.

Crucible of Worlds: A highly accepted and used maindeck inclusion in a lot of Landstill builds. Crucible is excellent at providing a lot of utility with Wasteland/Fetchland/Manland recursion. It has a lot of uses in the mirror. It has recently hit the sideboard to accommodate room for maindeck Decree of Justice. This is a very debatable slot and I’m not saying that either is right or wrong, because they are both very viable options in the maindeck.

This build has proved it self in many tournaments and across many environments. You must keep in mind that Landstill is a very flexible deck and can be easily adjusted and tailored to specific environments. While this is a widely accepted build and is what can easily be played in an unexpected metagame, the deck still has many options to its arsenal.

Please discuss.

TorpidNinja

06-23-2005, 08:17 PM

Could you please explain the choice to have four Faerie Conclaves? My experience is that they can be slow and bothersome early in the game, distracting from better win conditions like Dragon and Factory. Considering the already high volume of threats in the deck, why add more that aren't as efficient (albeit still necessary in one form or another).

Thanks in advance.

Bryant Cook

06-23-2005, 09:00 PM

Geoff up'd the count to 4 because of the mirror match in 'cuse. The mirror match is everywhere and the more uncounterable dudes the better. They are slow but they make up for it as an attackable island, Also against decks that play choke conclave untaps.

colsmack

06-23-2005, 09:50 PM

I'm not so sure that this is a widely agreed upon list. It may have done well, but seems tailored to a specific meta. The lack of MD Crucibles is extremely questionable, especially for a build that is supposed to serve as an example for the deck. I would consider using a more mainstream build, that can do well in various metas.

Jander78

06-24-2005, 12:07 AM

Colsmack - If you read the part written about Crucible you will realize that it is an already debated slot. It's fine not to agree with an exact build, but state reasons why instead of just stating that you don't agree. The fact is, this exact build has won 2 big tournaments on it's own in completley different areas, along with winning a lot of smaller tournaments.

Citrus-God

06-24-2005, 12:54 AM

Crucible, how would you feel that in a mirror match, you will get wastelands/crucible lock thrown at you?

Nevinyrral's Disk, I see as an oxymoron. Why in hell would you play a sorcery, that takes up your mana from activating manlands, paying 6 mana?
Disk is good, it can be activated in instant speed, it works on turn 5. When you do at the end of your opponent's turn, you can attack with all your manlands on your turn!
Akroma's Vengeance won't let you do anything, because it's a sorcery. You play it, and you go all like, I wish i can attack you for 2~16 right now. *sighs*

Stifle; Not only this thing hates combo, it prevents manlands from getting scooped by wasteland.

And FoF needs to be at threes.

Weavus

06-24-2005, 01:36 AM

Akroma's Vengeance was chosen in response to artifact hate against Disk. That was stated in the origional post, and I think it's a very good choice. Never dead. More likely to go through. It is, as stated, slower. If your meta hasn't caught on to Disk, then you can stick with it. My only true beef with that list is the inclusion of 7 sweepers..and 4 swords to boot. You could drop 1 Vengeance and 1 Wrath and you'd have plenty. And now you have two slots to do with as you please.

And could you explain why FoF needs to be 3-of?

midnightAce

06-24-2005, 03:19 AM

There are a couple of things I feel the need to respond to.

And FoF needs to be at threes.

Short of the Landstill staple cards with the auto inclusion of 4ofs, the rest of the cards, might it be Crucible, FoF, Stifle, DoJ, ED, E.Angel, or any of the other ones should be tailored to suit the meta game and not "needs to be at [insert number]". That is a strength of Landstill, be able to tailored to the specific meta to have the RIGHT NUMBER of reduntencies to max the effeciency of the deck.

Vengence is slower than Disk is only applicable in turn 4 and 5. After that, Vengence is considered faster since top decking it means board wipe NOW, not a turn later. With most of the decks packing mainboard artifact hate, having the need to protect the Disk often means turn 6 cast with Counter to backup anyways, in which case a Vengence could have wiped the board by then. If I remember correctly, there is detailed disccusions in the original thread, so I don't need to repeat myself here. The only point I really wanted to bring up is that Vengence is not always slower than Disk, that is a misconception that a lot of you need to change your views on.

EDIT: Forgot to respond to Stifle and Crucible.

Crucible: The post did mention that it is SBed for mirror matches, not completely removed from the list. So while first match, the version packing Crucible might be at an advantage, but if the meta was packed full of combo and fast aggro decks, the version with Crucible might just lose because of the Crucible clogging in their hand, again, this is more of a meta issue than anything else. Also note that with the addition of 2 DoJ and 2 ED, the deck's win condition goes up by 50%, that might reduce the need of recurring manlands.

Stifle: While it has a variety of applications, again, it is more of a meta game call more than anything else. Using the above example, if the meta was NOT filled with combos, instead, aggros such as Angel Stompy that runs limited "abilties", then Stifle becomes a liability in opening hand, especially multiples.

imran

06-24-2005, 08:30 AM

I am not an expert on this deck, but I have one question.
As far as I know, the decks target is to play the control game, adapt to the opponent, sweep the boad and kill with the manlands.
It seems to me as if this deck plays in the same way like in 1998 (not sure about the year, so lets say a long time ago) Counter-Post did. It used Forces, Counterspells, Boadsweepers and as kill the Kjeldoran Outpost. Standstill and a lot of other cards were not printed at this time.

So what do you think about the inclusion of the Kjeldoran Outpost?

colsmack

06-24-2005, 11:01 AM

The thing about Outpost is that it rtequires you to sacrifice a plains, which can be tough. Also, your tokens die to Wrath/Vengeance/Disk which is a disadvantage. Outpost has been talked about before, read through the old thread.

After looking over the decklist, I realize that this is actually a pretty standard build, but with different meta slots than I usually see. As it won 2 major tournamwnts, I'm sure it is very good.

My last point is sideboards, what sidebards are most optiaml to deal with a variety of Legacy decks?

Hoojo

06-24-2005, 12:25 PM

Don't forget that 3 of the 7 sweepers can be cycled for an extra card. I think this is also a reason Akroma's Vengeance was included; Unlike Nevinyrral's Disk, it's never a dead draw. In old Landstill builds, I would sometimes draw a Disk when I needed a win condition.

Bryant Cook

06-24-2005, 01:56 PM

so what do you think about the inclusion of the Kjeldoran Outpost?
It's rather funny someone mentioned outpost, I just picked one up from Geoff Smelski 2 weeks ago to run in landstill. I'm currently running outpost over the 4th conclave. Geoff ran outpost in landstill for awhile, until he cut cruicible from the main deck. I myself love outpost over the 4th conclave It's a decree of justice in a land form. Also provides as a great blocker for something you can't handle (example:troll) without your lands dying if you don't have cruicible.
As for vengenance Vs. Nev. disk Vengance is way better. Instant speed mass removal is nice but the only card you fear at an instant speed is decree of justice, which is why I run 4 stifle in the board. Everything else you don't have to worry about.

colsmack

06-24-2005, 05:18 PM

I personally run a list very similar to this, but have Crucible in the deck over Decree, with Decree out of the board. I rely more on recurring manlands than a big Decree to win.

What about Blinkmoth Nexus? It might be less damage efficient than other manlands, but with crucible it is an infinite blocker, with flying. You can't block all day with Conclave and Crucible.

Finally, what are staple cards in the board? I would say Humility, CoP:Red, and either Decree or crucible depending on which is MD are run in almost all SBs.

Jander78

06-24-2005, 05:26 PM

What about Blinkmoth Nexus? It might be less damage efficient than other manlands, but with crucible it is an infinite blocker, with flying. You can't block all day with Conclave and Crucible.

Nexus is a great card, but it doesn't produce U, which makes it extremely tough to run over Conclave and it is strictly worse than Factory.

Finally, what are staple cards in the board? I would say Humility, CoP:Red, and either Decree or crucible depending on which is MD are run in almost all SBs.
I am in the process of writing up a sideboard strategy article, mainly you have a ton of options including:

Of the red hosers, what does everyone feel is currently the best? Chill, Pulse or coP?

Chill is good for slowing gobbos to where you can sweep and stabilize the board, against bur decks, it can slow them enough but weakens without Pulse.

Pulse is a little slow, but works wonders with Chill. Slowjng them down for multiple plays of this just destroys red. Not so hot on its own IMO.

CoP:Red can work well on its own, all game, and deal with multiple threats at once. I feel that this is the best option, as it doesn't rquire as mana SB slots, and can slow the game down by shutting down many threats a turn.

Slay

06-24-2005, 07:59 PM

Pulse is absolutely _amazing_. Using it for a few turns encourages Goblins to overcommit, then you Wrath and win the game. And unlike COP: Red, it has use against all aggro decks.
-Slay

dsg123456789

06-24-2005, 10:49 PM

I've been playing landstill for a few months, and I have some questions and comments:

I have been playing with -1 Wrath, -2 DoJ, +3 Crucible MD. Is 3 Crucible needed? I find that when I resolve them, I win, but I don't always find them when I could use them. This is often because I ship them back to hiding with Brainstorm in the early game to protect them from discard, and because I'm afraid of tapping out in the early game w/o Force backup, but waiting for counter backup takes a long time (Turn 5, past many decks FT). On the other hand, crucible is so devastating, and I play in a meta full of either scrubs or survival decks that roll over to wasteland, so it seems that 3 Maindecked is the right choice. No one else plays Landstill in my area, so that probably changes my perceptions.

I have been using Disks instead of Vengeance. I know that disk is inferior (except for the instant bit), but, since I do not find much or any artifact hate in my meta, would you run it? (i.e. No one will blow it up, so does that make it good enough?)

Again, since I do not have any other landstill players in my area, is there any reason not to play a delta instead of the 4th Conclave? Would the Outpost be better here? What about a 3rd basic island?

I have been running 3-4 Tormod's Crypt in my sideboard, because it can hose random decks that like their graveyard, such as Reanimator and Cephalid/Full English Breakfast. Also, Crypt shuts down the Survival decks I encounter.

For other sideboarding bits, I tested Exalted Angels, and tapping out early for them was not good--they would get burned out when morphed, and turn 6 is too slow too start stopping fast burn/aggro (you are dead).

While contemplating tech, I thought of an interesting idea. If you maindeck crucible, Mox Diamond becomes an interesting choice. It may require the addition of 2 more lands, but being able to have a turn 1 counterspell or standstill seems like it would be good, in addition the the tempo boost it gives (the boost would end on turn 6, I imagine). Perhaps this has already been tested, but it seems like it just might have potential in the right metagame. Also, the discarding of a land might hurt too much, or its deadness under standstill, but it seems like it could be played around. I will test it for a few hours when I return to my home tommorrow night.

Boogy_Boy

06-26-2005, 04:43 AM

Anyone thinking of playing Balance?

It's a wrath of god for 1W and you can probably discard some uneeded disenchant/land to it. Also, it helps make sure your opponent has the same number of lands and/or cards in hand as you.

And Kjeldoran Outpost looks interesting. [glare]

T is for TOOL

06-26-2005, 05:12 AM

Anyone thinking of playing Balance?
That card is not recommended at a sanctioned tournament considering it's banned from the format and all.

colsmack

06-26-2005, 12:20 PM

Balance would make you discard a lot of your hand, and you want to kee pyour hand full. Not to mention its banned in the format...

Did you ever wonder why no one ever suggested Balance for any other deck using white, or why the Balance deck wasn't played? :;):

Boogy_Boy

06-27-2005, 03:52 AM

(changes the topic to stop myself from looking any more stupid)
Ok, everyone seems to be saying pulse is amazing.. but I can't find room for it.

Where exactly do u fit pulse in? Is there something that can be cut from the first 5 cards I listed?

------------------------of topic----------------
Hmmm.... I didn't really think much about balance. I just thought it seems a good idea... Cos someone suggested it before in the old thread, and no one seemed to pay any attention.. So thought I'd bring it up again.. :p guess now I know why.

Well, so long as I've a counterspell for each of his card in hand. What do I really need to worry about? What's more, with lands being wasted/burned/edicted/smothered/etc etc. Balance can force your opponent to sac land as well...

Maybe I'm just a suckass player but I run 2 Pulse in the MD because..well..I always found myself siding them in. I mean fucking constantly. I took out a DChant (because my meta is full of stupid creature/burn decks) and 1 Crucible (because I think I'm the only punk that plays dual lands in Seattle) and the deck does fine...for where I play anyways.

In fact, I'm always pleased to see a Pulse. Maybe because I suck and always need one...

Where exactly do u fit pulse in?
Do you believe in running white sources? or casting white spells. Sorry but you don't run basic plains when you should be running 1 or 2 plains. MD pulse huh? I don't know so much about that, any good player will start mana burning.

Rivs

06-27-2005, 04:05 PM

I do play two pulses main, since there simply are too many aggressive decks to not play them. Lots of red means stabilizing with two wrath of god won't win the game if they come back with a flurry of burn spells. I do believe pulses are my training wheels for the deck and that sometime in the future i will come around to swap them for the cards the good players play.

In the meantime, i think pulses own most aggro decks in the format, and if they start mana burning to pull it from your hand then that's just the time you need to find yourself a dragon and win, it sure happens. Apart from that, it's not like Landstill can't alpha strike for like 6-8 damage in the late game, so they can't just go burning theirselves away, i seriously don't think that strategy invalidates pulse as an answer to aggro.

I suppose pulse is dead against ATS, combo and control, but until a well shaped meta forms, Pulse is a card i'm not pulling from the maindeck. Althoug im curious about what the main arguments for not playing it maindeck are, apart from those mentioned above.

Zilla

06-27-2005, 04:37 PM

Perhaps I misspoke. What I meant to say was that in an idealized metagame, Pulse doesn't belong in the maindeck. It's fair to say that there isn't much of an idealized metagame anywhere right now, and that in certain metgames (read: aggro-heavy), Pulse is in fact strong enough to warrant maindeck slots. In an "ideal" meta consisting of vaguely equal parts aggro/combo/control, MD Pulse would be a bad call.

danyul

06-27-2005, 04:56 PM

Apart from that, it's not like Landstill can't alpha strike for like 6-8 damage in the late game,

Speaking of alpha strikes, I just went in (on MWS) for 19 or so with 7 soldiers, a dragon, two factories and a conclave. T'was cool.

But seriously, I have never had a problem with people manaburning themselves. I have done it myself when faced with a Pulse but for some reason I have never seen my opponents do it. Even if they did, as Rivs pointed out, thats 2 or so points closer to the win for you, and you still gain the life.

Actually, most people start overextending (into a later Wrath) when I start Pulsing at the end of their turns.

It's win-win in my perspective.

Edit - I posted at the same time as Godzilla.

Destavi

06-29-2005, 03:15 AM

Would someone explain why they think Dragon should be included in Landstill? It has synergies on the surface of it but I found it to be entirely too cumbersome. When you're nearly tapping out to return him you could just be swinging with manlands. Then when you play him next turn you could be swinging with a bunch of manlands. He's too slow as a win condition against aggro, and in the mirror he just gets swordsed, and he gives them something to wrath as well. It also makes the deck more vulnerable to Tormod's crypt which I've had ppl side in against me even with no dragon.

danyul

06-29-2005, 03:38 AM

When you're nearly tapping out to return him you could just be swinging with manlands. Then when you play him next turn you could be swinging with a bunch of manlands.
I've never tapped out to recur a dragon (or cast one, for that matter). I would only do so if there was absolutely nothing my opponent could to to kill me that turn. Most times, I dont cast dragon until I have the game well in control with more than enough lands to cast and protect it. I also dont think I have ever swung with manlands on turn 5. And yes, you could be swinging with manlands instead of playing the dragon, but then you wouldnt be able to counter stuff...and shit. Maybe I didnt respond to this point adequately...

He's too slow as a win condition against aggro
You dont race aggro with a 7cc dragon. That's just foolishness. You wait until you have the game in control before you play the dragon. At that point, speed is irrelevant.

and in the mirror he just gets swordsed, and he gives them something to wrath as well
If your opponent is StPing your dragons, then thats one less StP to be used against your manlands. If your opponent is using Wrath as a Terror against your lone dragon (I wouldnt play more than one dragon out in the mirror, unless I had the counter) then you can always recur it (which is half the reason its so great) and thats one less Wrath that you have to worry about after you DoJ for 8 tokens.

It also makes the deck more vulnerable to Tormod's crypt which I've had ppl side in against me even with no dragon.
I've had people side in Crypt against me as well. It isn't a problem. You still have DoJ and the manlands, which are close to recursive with a Crucible. Hell, if you're really that afraid of the Crypt then you can always counter it, although I wouldnt recommend it.

Overall, the dragon is a perfect fit because it is one of the most resilient creatures in the format. Sure, StP can take care of it, but if you used that logic then you would never play another creature deck. The dragon is a CA machine and fits perfectly in a deck in which every card gives you CA or, at the very least, card parity (with the exception of Fow, which is awesome enough to explain itself).

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-29-2005, 01:21 PM

Also note that Dragon is amazing for providing consistent landrops in the control-on-control mirror. The fact that it's Plaincycling is colorless also means that you can run a predominantly Blue mana base and still be able to get consistent fourth turn Wrath's.

New point; With the rise of Solidarity, which is in many places now beginning to replace ATS as the second best deck in the format in many players' opinions, with it's ability to not roll over and die to Landstill, should the idea of maindecking Stifles once again be considered? Also tech in a lot of matches if you can Stifle their early fetchlands, or a DoJ.

BoTS

06-29-2005, 03:20 PM

I think Stifle will not be needed in the main deck until Solidarity becomes a huge part of any metagame. Right now in most metas, Solidarity is usually played by a couple of players, meaning that a few sideboard Blessings or Chalices should work fine.

Bryant Cook

06-29-2005, 03:20 PM

Myself and Jander were talking about maindeck stifles at amrod's. The question is what are you going to cut? Wrath, vengance, disenchant? maybe cruicible. Opposing decree of justice is also not a good thing for landstill as IBA mentioned, I was playing against kaddyshack the 4 stifles I boarded in for his 4 decrees were the only thing that won me the game, IBA's deck and fakespams "I'm better than you" smash landstill if they are in your meta I don't see a reason not to play stifle main.

Destavi

06-30-2005, 12:13 AM

When I played stifle main I had them in the place of what are currently 3 mana leaks. I like stifle in landstill, I'm just not sure if it's good enough. One of the biggest reasons to play stifle imo is to help develop your mana. If an opposing aggro or aggro control deck can get off a wasteland early it can really hurt by keeping the wrath off for a turn or denying the double white entirely.

HBspulse

06-30-2005, 06:21 AM

Hi,

this is my list I played at the last tournament (23 players).
I ended up with one loss, against enchantress (!) with xantid swarms.
I finished 2nd with equal points.

I play a transformational side, where I can switch to scepter-chant, to surprise any deck that doesn't play counters and instant artifact removal, such as RGSA, ...
The pulses and the 4 beb are a must to stop sligh and red deck wins variants. Anything that costs over 4 mana is unusable in my opinion. Pulse should be in the side, it's hard enough getting double white and only needed against certain decks.

What do you guys think I should change? Since Aether Vial appeared, should landstill not get a decent makeover to cope with this threat? (e.g. chain of vapor to send it back).

What is the best thing to do in a mirrormatch, adding reb instead of standstills or are there better things to do?

dsg123456789

06-30-2005, 01:51 PM

@HBspulse-- I don't think that the transformational sideboard is the best idea, for this reason: Isochron Sceptre goes against landstill's stragety, by encouraging you to play a spell every turn. Landstill wants lands, activated abilities, and powerful one-shots so that it hide behind standstill protection. Any deck that can't hate out the scepters should lose to good old Landstill too.

I advocate a pure U/w list, because I do not think red adds much to landstill's gameplan that cannot be outclassed by the white options.

First of all, 2 colors gives you at least 4 basic lands, which will allow you to hardcast almost your entire deck under heavy wasteland assault.

Second, I have found Akroma's Vengeance/Nevinyrrl's Disk to be absolutely nessecary to win many games, b/c of their ability to destroy artifacts and enchantments. They steal games you have no right to win.

Third, I do not think that red adds enough to the deck. Fire/Ice is always playable, but its not terribly powerful. Cantrip and tap a permanent or kill 2 1/1s isn't that great. A 4th Wrath or another sweeper could perform the latter's function, but against even larger creature too. That was weak, but even so, Fire/Ice isn't that powerful. REB is nice, but 4 more nonbasics for one useful sideboard hate card is not my idea of a sound game plan.

Geet

07-02-2005, 05:34 PM

I am posting my list as I have had really good results with it. When I play this list in local tournaments, I almost always win 1st or 2nd.

I always construct control or aggro/control decks in the same way: by percentage of card types (threats, removal, draw, mana, etc)

Here is what I have found to be the optimal numbers for a Landstill type deck, which falls somewhere between aggro/control and control (pure control is something like BBS, aggro/control would be gro)

Counters: 8-10
Removal: 10-12
Draw: 10
Threats: 10-12
Mana: 26

I usually go with a 10/10/10/11/26 set up. I realize that's more than 60 cards, but thats b/c some cards count twice (manlands).

Here's a breakdown:

Counters (10):
Standard:
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell

Options:
2x Stifle (my usual choice. it's saved my butt so many times, and due to it's decline in popularity around here, it can be a surprise. The ability to stop a Wasteland is golden)
2x Misdirection (too narrow most of the time since you dont run that many creatures, if any)
2x Twincast (i've been testing this and it's spectacular sometimes, but dead just a little too often for my taste. i usually only run it for fun)
2x Mana Leak (i dont really like it, but some do)
2x Annul (there are certain metagames where this is actually worth maindecking, although it would be rare)
none: If you want to stick to 8 counters and add a couple of additional removal spells, that can be useful too

Draw (10):
Many will argue against this much draw, but I have found 10 draw spells to be ideal in almost every control deck.
Standard:
4x Brainstorm (ancestral recall w/ fetches, duh)
4x Standstill (yeah, this is landSTILL)
2x Fact or Fiction (i have mastered the art of resolving this spell against anyone, but i will not share my secret :)

I see no other viable options on the draw section. Some will argue for 3 FoF, but 11 draw spells are too much, and you do NOT want to cut down on Brainstorm or Standstill.

Removal (10): This is usually the only section that I fiddle with each time I put the deck together, because it's so metagame dependent.
Standard:
4x Swords to Plowshares (no brainer)

Options:
2-4x Wrath of God (i usually include 2 b/c this format is creature heavy)
2x Nevinyrral's Disk (i can't imagine running more than 2 of these anymore. If your metagame contains a lot of maindeck artifact hate, you should probably drop these for Akroma's Vengeance)
2x Akroma's Vengeance (wow, this thing is expensive, but sometimes it's just what you need. Use this in place of disk if artifact hate abounds)
2-3x Disenchant (I usually run 2 maindeck. It's almost always find these useful game 1)
2-3x Vedalken Shackles (I ran these long before T2 caught on. I have since removed them, but in an aggro heavy meta, they are better than any of the above choices other than WoG)

I usually run 2 Wraths, 2 Disenchants, and 2 Disks (but I swap out disks for vengeance depending on what I think I will be up against)

Threats (11): This section is also up for debate, but i will give you my preferred choices.
4x Mishra's Factory (this is obvious)
0-4x Faerie Conclave (I always run 2. I see these as necessary evils. CiPT sucks, big time, just face it. But you need your Standstills to work)
0-3x Eternal Dragon (I run 2. These guys are awesome. They're like fetchlands and manlands all in one. I rarely ever bring one back from the grave though. Only in long drawn out matches against control. Early ones turn into Tundras. Late ones smash for 5.)
0-4x Exalted Angel (I know most have dismissed this one, but in my meta, she wins games alone. I usually run 3. What people don't realize is that she pulls double duty as both win condition and board sweeper against an aggro deck. Yeah that's right, she's another wrath, because putting her on the table can stop an opponents team from swinging ever again.)
0-2x Decree of Justice (I usually reserve these for the sideboard, b/c they're just too mana intensive to be useful against most matchups)

Other:
0-3x Crucible of Worlds (This doesn't really fit in any of the other sections, although it could be removal or draw if you look at it as a card advantage gaining tool. I generally play 0 or 2 of these depending on how many Wastelands I expect to see. If they don't make the maindeck, then they will be in the sb.)

Mana (26): (I am a strong supporter of 26 mana sources. I have fiddled with the mana base so much, I don't believe it's possible to get any more optimal than the following list)
4x Tundra
4x Flooded Strand
2x Eternal Dragon (i count him as a fetch land)
4x Mishra's Factory
2x Faerie Conclave
4x Wasteland
4x Island
2x Plains (yes, you really want 2, so you can still function with recurring wastelands, blood moons, and Price of Progress flying around)

Sideboard discussion: Recently I've talked to several people about the idea of running Absorb over Pulse of the Fields in the sideboard. Absorb performs a very similar role against Aggro; it will gain less life, but can also counter many relevant threats entirely. On the other hand, Absorb gives you another card to sideboard in against combo like Solidarity, whereas Pulse is a dead sideboard slot against them. It also keeps the Blue card count high for Force of Will.

On the downside, it costs three colored mana in a deck running 6-8 colorless lands. Frowny face.

Geet

07-03-2005, 03:25 AM

You definitely get style points for Absorb, but I don't believe the 3 life is going to make much difference. Pulse works because you can cast it 1-2 times every turn. It buys you several turns, which allows you to find that sweeper. Absorb is just a healing salve tacked onto counterspell, which may not even buy you one extra turn.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

07-03-2005, 04:45 AM

You definitely get style points for Absorb, but I don't believe the 3 life is going to make much difference. Pulse works because you can cast it 1-2 times every turn. It buys you several turns, which allows you to find that sweeper. Absorb is just a healing salve tacked onto counterspell, which may not even buy you one extra turn.
Unless it counters the larger threats. Also, you're running 10 White sources, and Dragon; explain when you're getting two Pulses a turn. Before your eighth or ninth land drop. Absorb can hit key cards like Piledriver, Ringleader, Deranged Hermit, Eternal Witness and others, while at the same time producing a positive life swing. Against pure aggro it's often less good than Pulse, but not significantly so, and with the major ability to function double duty in matchups where all you want is more counters, the last point being the most important.

danyul

07-03-2005, 04:47 AM

TheInfamousBearAssasin Posted on July 03 2005,3:45
...

Beat me to it. Point being, the Absorb is more versatile than the Pulse as a SB card. So there's no wrong answer...kinda sorta.

Also, Double Pulse isn't all that uncommon, even with all the noncolored lands. You have fetches, dragon, and..shit I dunno. I just dont usually have a problem doing it in the lategame, where you usually need it the most. Scratch that. Where I usually need it the most.

I would run Pulse in an aggro meta and Absorb in a control/combo meta, but that much is obvious. But if youre just boarding Absorb for use against control/combo decks, then why dont you just board good (or better) counters? Oh right, versatility. I'll stop being.

Completely unpolished. Reverance is a house against basically everything, and I feel better then moat (though that should have been in the board). No disks or vengences, because you are generally relying on your own enchantments to stay alive. No wraths, but thats probably a mistake, at least having some in the board or something. I would certainly drop a crucible for an aura of silence. It's probably a mistake not including an Ancient Den in the main, because against most aggro decks you just need humility or reverance to stabilize, and for that you need a second white, but it also can mean a goblins player with two wastelands beats you. Then again, if you have the cards you need in hand, I would feel pretty safe pithing the wastelands turn one.

SpikeyMikey

07-04-2005, 02:40 AM

Perhaps I misspoke. What I meant to say was that in an idealized metagame, Pulse doesn't belong in the maindeck. It's fair to say that there isn't much of an idealized metagame anywhere right now, and that in certain metgames (read: aggro-heavy), Pulse is in fact strong enough to warrant maindeck slots. In an "ideal" meta consisting of vaguely equal parts aggro/combo/control, MD Pulse would be a bad call.
Yes, but you're not going to see that ideal metagame. Whether people choose to accept it or not, and god knows everyone denies it, but this is currently an aggro driven environment, on the whole. Why there aren't more people playing Solidarity, I'll never know, but at the moment, aggro is where it's at. Start counting up T8 #'s and looking at the decks that are winning big tourneys.

While I agree that Disk runs into a lot of hate, especially incidental hate aimed at Survival match-ups, Vengeance *is* incredibly slow. I'm not sure I can countenance the switch. It makes dealing with aggro far more difficult in the early game. It's great late game if you've got a good hand early that lets you survive that long, but if you don't, it's just dead wood. The ability to cycle it is nearly irrelevant, it costs 3 to do so, and in the early part of the game, when things are at their most hairy, chances are, you won't have time to do that. By the time you get to Vengeance mana, chances are, your life total is low enough that you're just using it as an over-priced StP, maybe catching a second critter if you're lucky, but I don't see you getting to 6 mana and still being at over 10 life. Not unless your opponent mulled to 5 and kept a no land opening.

Of course, I don't play U/W Landstill, I feel the deck is too slow to reliably compete with aggro, and I'm willing to back that up testing with anyone who thinks otherwise, but I don't think the correct response to hate is to add even slower utility.

bigbear102

07-05-2005, 11:43 AM

I would like to see the list you are running if you can't compete in the aggro matchup, U/W is especially good in that matchup.

With StP, Wrath, and counters you should be able to stay in it. Decree for blockers keeps you alive also. At that point the Vengeance is good.

Geoff Smelski performs with this deck every week. He has no trouble with aggro.

Bryant Cook

07-06-2005, 04:12 PM

I thought there was a rule of no spamming up threads with decklist, Whatever happened to that?
As for the whole aggro match-up Spikey Mikey I don't know who you are playing against, But they have got to be the worst landstill player ever. With wrath, vengance, swords, Cruicible (factory is removal as far as I'm concerned.)
Absorb seems decent but why use a 3 colored counterspell to gain 3 life when you could swords a factory?

baptist

07-18-2005, 08:41 AM

A friend of me plays Vedalken Shackles in his deck. He says that you can steal manlands with this card when I make a creature of them and that they stay in play on his side.

Is this correct?

Please keep rules related questions to the rules forum. For clarification see the following thread:
http://mtgthesource.com/cgi-bin....19;t=66 (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=286)
-Jander

Edited By Jander78 on 1121708127

mulder

07-18-2005, 11:01 AM

A friend of me plays Vedalken Shackles in his deck. He says that you can steal manlands with this card when I make a creature of them and that they stay in play on his side.

Is this correct?
Gelooft ge me niet Baptist :p

Last time I used the Shackles in my sideboard, but i had to board them in almost every time. There aren't a lot of decks that don't use creatures, and since you can use them to steal manlands too, it's not dead against Landstill either. And if you're playing against aggro, one Shackles can swing the game, effectively eliminating two creatures, since you can use the one you stole to block another one with.

pater

07-21-2005, 10:41 AM

Playing in a meta-game with a decent amount of aggro decks, my creature control in MD consists of:

3 Wrath of God
3 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 StP

Shackles sounds like a good play but from experience I haven't needed more creature control. The only deck that really seems to overflow with creatures is Vial Goblins. Even then, Chills in SB tend to slow that down enough where you can control the game by the time they get going.

Absorb doesn't seem to fit in the deck at all. Style points rewarded, but Pulse does buy the time you need to get a sweeper. Pulse always buys at least 2 more turns and sometimes forces them into mana-burn mode. Pulse > Absorb.

Braves54321

07-21-2005, 10:53 AM

Oh yea, I forgot to post after Big Arse.

Anyways,

I have added 2 Mystical Tutor to my build, and have absolutely loved it. Finding a wrath when its needed, a decree in the mirror, or, if nothing else a FoF has been great.

It saved my ass a few times on saturday when I needed to find disenchant asap to kill a crucible/jitte.

I also cut Akroma's Vengenance, because its the slowest removal ever, I'd run disk over it, but thats my own personal choice.

So has anyone else tested Mystical Tutor?

B is for Big Job

07-21-2005, 01:24 PM

I have and it was simply amazing. In playtesting against gobs it was so good. Helped me clear his board and pwn his 1st turn lackey onto the train to poundsville

KillerWhiteRabbit

07-21-2005, 09:57 PM

I also tried it, but was not quite so impressed with the results. I always found that by the time i drew it the next turn it was too late, and the current threat had already killed me or made my sollution pointless. I always found myself sideing them out for real answers and wishing i had my 2 chain of vapors back(yea, i play them).

Surprisingly, vengence was a godsend to me last weekend (local tournament, can't believe i forgot big arse...). It's less picky boardsweeping was disgustingly effective (once i took out a pithing needle set to mishra's, a wild mongrol, meddling mage set to wrath, Jitte with no counters, aether vial with 2 counters, and an equiped SOfI), and it's cycling was greatly appreciated in the 2 mirrors i ended up playing. To each thier own, i guess.

Last week i also spent some time testing out shackles. I always had the stolen critter for a turn or 2, then either ended up wrathing or vengence(ing) due to an incoming horde that my one stolen guy had no chance of stopping. Against ATS and almost anything else in my meta, this card is even weaker as it can simply be bounced/killed (everyone where i play runs MB hate due to the presence of affinity). I really hate vengencing my own stuff away, too, so it seems like: extra permanents=bad.

67-1122470612

07-28-2005, 11:28 PM

Does The Tabernacle At Penderell Vale have a place in this deck? Im thinking that a copy or two may have a spot in the board versus Gobbos or ATS. Heres my thinking:

Pros:
Helps restrict the abuse of Aether Vial.
Really imedes any development based on mana critters.
Cant be countered.
Strong synergy with man-land kill mechanism for the deck.
Good control mechanism that can be played under Standstill.

Cons:
Doesnt produce mana.
Legendary land.
Wasteland-able.

All in all, I think that the pluses would outweigh the minuses in those matchups. The fact that it is vulnerable to Wasteland can be seen as a plus actually, because every Wasteland that hits a Tabernacle is one that didnt hit a colored source or manland. Like a Cabal Therapy for Wasteland. :)

Has this been tried yet? Am I missing something?

Destavi

07-29-2005, 12:00 AM

Not producing mana is huge. The worst games this deck has it when it doesn't have the mana to WoG, FoF, or two blue for a counter. Impeding your mana development is the wrong way to go about evolving this deck.

This deck should smoke ATS and goblins anyway. It would have to be a sideboard card, and there are way better sideboard cards for both of those matchups. Wrath should do the same thing anyway, and it does it much better than the Tabernacle. Against goblins, you have your pick of COP: Red, Chill, Humility, etc. Imo COP: Red is the best.

Against ATS, the entire maindeck is great against them. For sideboard you should bring in 2-3 Tormod's Crypt. I wouldn't worry about the matchup too much after that.

KillerWhiteRabbit

07-29-2005, 12:37 PM

[color=#000000:post_uid11]Do you really think that crypts are necissary in the SB? I've found that they are nice, but too much of a silver bullet for my purpuses. The ATS matchup is already strong in your favor, even post board. I have yet to loose a game to ATS.

I really like the idea of tabbernackle, and i really don't think that the not producing mana part is as bad as Destavi makes it out to be. When you swap it in, it won't replace a land but rather something else as to keep your manabase intact. Also, the one time walk it does provide your opponent is more than made up for in thier upkeep costs screwing with thier tempo. I would really like to try this out, but my SB slots just seem so tight right now...

Any ideas on what to cut for a tabbernackle (TAPV?)?[/color:post_uid11]

Bryant Cook

07-29-2005, 01:19 PM

Meh, I hate the idea of tabbernackle it's just more of a win more card. Does landstill need extra removal? really think about it 4x wrath is enough by itself. Why not put in glacial chasum (sp?) then? That card stops combat damage! Sorry for being a dick but the card is not needed. As for your SB KillerWhiteRabbit IMO cruicible should be maindeck.
Here's my sideboard:
3x cop:red
3x pulse of the fields
2x Gaea's blessing (it's sad I know but it works and you can always brainstorm and shuffle it back.)
2x tormod's crypt
4x stifle
1x decree of justice (For the mirror, I run 2 main.)

midnightAce

07-29-2005, 03:33 PM

I know this is an age old debate, but I feel the need to bring it up: Furnace vs. Crypt.

Looking at BAII results, Gro varients depends on Threshold quite a bit to deliver their blow, as for other SotF deck, there are only key cards such as Squee, Genesis, Anger needs to be removed, in Landstill mirrors, the ability to remove their manlands/Wastelands in grave is important to ensure your OWN Crucible lock.

All that be said, Crypt is a one shot deal, and can often be stopped by Stifle. Like the NOQ thread pointed out, when Gro mirror matches happen, Furnace is prefered over Cypt to continuesly eat away the opponent's graveyard, and at worst, cycles for cards. Should Landstill be borrowing that principle and switch Crypts to Furnace instead?

troopatroop

07-29-2005, 03:41 PM

In response to comments before about ATS being an amazing matchup, I have to disagree with you. I've played against Landstill alot in tournaments and have finished ahead by alot. I'm not claiming it to be a positive matchup for ATS, but its pretty damn close to even. I really don't fear landstill when playing ATS. Either the ATS players you played against were mediocre, or they drew utter crap. Either way the matchup definetly isn't amazing for you. You should in no way "smoke" them.

pater

07-29-2005, 05:15 PM

Through my eyes, If a Landstill player knows how ATS works, they should be able to beat it; not smoke it, but get the win.

kimberley

07-29-2005, 11:06 PM

re: crypt/furnace
In my area Ur is as viable as Uw-Landstill. We strictly play Furnace not Crypt. In Ur i play two of them MD and feel no need at all to cut them. Having Yardhate Game 1 has won me many games in the extremely bad matchups Ur has (SA, TheRock).

re: ATS
I have played all three decks Uw, Ur and ATS, and i have won several Tournaments with each of them. In my team we have tested these matchups extensively and have reached the result: From our point of view... Landstill very well smokes ATS.
It is a fact i don't like, cause ATS is the Deck i love most of those three, but i had to accept it.
The concrete numbers of our testing results:
ATS vs. Uw
35% - 65%
ATS vs. Ur
25% - 75%
Those were games (half pre board half post board), not matches). Testing Volume: about 90 games.
My experience in tournaments is exactly the same: I have never seen ATS win a match against any Landstill deck whatever obscure splashes and choices they ran.
I had to draw against subpar Landstill once too (running exactly Diablos list at that time and winning the tournament despite that draw).
Of course all testing may fail if either the decks or the plays are flawed. For my skill i cannot guarantee you anything, but if anyone wants lists of the used decks he or she may pm me.
I don't want to aggressively push forward this opinion (and i am sad i did not get around the word 'fact'), but just want to show my expierience and....well...
...vote for "smokes".

Destavi

07-31-2005, 05:08 AM

I know this is an age old debate, but I feel the need to bring it up: Furnace vs. Crypt.

Looking at BAII results, Gro varients depends on Threshold quite a bit to deliver their blow, as for other SotF deck, there are only key cards such as Squee, Genesis, Anger needs to be removed, in Landstill mirrors, the ability to remove their manlands/Wastelands in grave is important to ensure your OWN Crucible lock.

All that be said, Crypt is a one shot deal, and can often be stopped by Stifle. Like the NOQ thread pointed out, when Gro mirror matches happen, Furnace is prefered over Cypt to continuesly eat away the opponent's graveyard, and at worst, cycles for cards. Should Landstill be borrowing that principle and switch Crypts to Furnace instead?
I used to play Furnace but I found it too slow compared to Crypt. When it worked it was great, the problem I had quite a few times was that against threshold, one card a turn doesn't turn their guys off. Many games they would just keep dumping cards in, and I would be hopelessly far behind. In many of those games a Crypt would have taken all their steam away and turned all their guys "off". In the matches where you need it, it just seems like the Crypt is better, being able to shut off Threshold guys, against a Survival player's grave full of creatures, or as a quick answer to Reanimator the Crypt gets it does whereas Furnace removes a Fetch and says "go".

kirdape3

07-31-2005, 11:04 AM

Furnace is a maindeck card because it is never dead (against decks that don't care either way, it cycles). Crypt is a board card because it actually does the job of eliminating the graveyard when you want it to.

kimberley

07-31-2005, 11:18 AM

I know this is an age old debate, but I feel the need to bring it up: Furnace vs. Crypt.

Looking at BAII results, Gro varients depends on Threshold quite a bit to deliver their blow, as for other SotF deck, there are only key cards such as Squee, Genesis, Anger needs to be removed, in Landstill mirrors, the ability to remove their manlands/Wastelands in grave is important to ensure your OWN Crucible lock.

All that be said, Crypt is a one shot deal, and can often be stopped by Stifle. Like the NOQ thread pointed out, when Gro mirror matches happen, Furnace is prefered over Cypt to continuesly eat away the opponent's graveyard, and at worst, cycles for cards. Should Landstill be borrowing that principle and switch Crypts to Furnace instead?
I used to play Furnace but I found it too slow compared to Crypt. When it worked it was great, the problem I had quite a few times was that against threshold, one card a turn doesn't turn their guys off. Many games they would just keep dumping cards in, and I would be hopelessly far behind. In many of those games a Crypt would have taken all their steam away and turned all their guys "off". In the matches where you need it, it just seems like the Crypt is better, being able to shut off Threshold guys, against a Survival player's grave full of creatures, or as a quick answer to Reanimator the Crypt gets it does whereas Furnace removes a Fetch and says "go".
Well Furnace is much better than Crypt against a Toolbox Yard like in ATS, SA, TheRock.
Crypt is better if you are in real trouble against Gro* or Reanimator, where the mass of cards is what hurts you, not a few specific ones.

But...
Gro* and Reanimator can be very well treated with StoP, WoG and Countermagic, while SA, (ATS,) TheRock will kill you slow but sure, if you cannot either overrun them or handle their yard.

*The Argument, that you will not erase Threshold with Furnace is correct, but imo not relevant. Against Crypt Gro will build up new threshold within two or three turns, while if you get your hands on two Furnaces quick enough, Gro flat out loses the game.

midnightAce

07-31-2005, 04:12 PM

*The Argument, that you will not erase Threshold with Furnace is correct, but imo not relevant. Against Crypt Gro will build up new threshold within two or three turns, while if you get your hands on two Furnaces quick enough, Gro flat out loses the game.

Yea, that was what I was getting at. Crypt vs Threshold is a one shot deal. Building a new one takes 2-3 turns at best. So another question would be, has Gro varients reached enough popularity that warrents Landstill to SB additional graveyard hate or mainboard Furnaces?

Danger

07-31-2005, 04:37 PM

I think another point worth noting is once disk or vengeance hits, the Furnace will be gone. Sure, you can cycle it, but that doesn't do a whole lot to Gro's threshold. They can just drop more 4/4s for two or whatever. At least with Crypt, you get a few extra turns to hopefully find some answers and allow you to start fighting back with your manlands or tokens. The crypt is more of a card you want in a deck that is trying to stay away from nonland permanents.

Destavi

07-31-2005, 04:38 PM

Another thing to consider is that if you want to get 2 Furnaces against gro then you're gonna need to have at least 3 and probably 4 in your deck. I've found that you usually don't need that much hate and that one well timed crypt is all you need to slow them down enough for the W.

socia02

07-31-2005, 04:59 PM

I'm sorry, but i've been paying against goblins alot with u/w landstill, and i just cannot beat goblins, they often kill me before i can wrath (primarily because they play the black splash for cabal therapy). I just can't figure out what i'm doing wrong. in my opinion, goblins is 50/50 vs landstill, and it really comes down to the draw. Can someone help me figure out what to sideboard in and out vs goblins? i've trid cop red, pulse, and humility.

GRAH

07-31-2005, 05:04 PM

The R/b version is 50/50, but the R/w version is better because their white SB options are fairly useless. Without Duress and Therapy, they also can't take out the Wraths. I'd say it's 60/40 at least.

morbid.

08-01-2005, 12:59 AM

What's that card that destroys all Goblins? Maybe you could SB one of those. I have yet to come across that in my more casual Type-2-ish meta, but I'm pretty sure it would be good to have at least one or two.

baptist

08-01-2005, 07:51 AM

it's Tivadar's Crusade (1WW sorcery: destroy all goblins)

GRAH

08-01-2005, 11:53 AM

Tivadar's Crusade is simply pointless for a deck that already runs WoGs. Not-Quite-Gro ran it only because that deck can't play WoGs or other mass-creature removal safely. This deck can.

Nightmare

08-01-2005, 12:01 PM

That's not entirely true, GRAH, as Crusade comes down turn 3, and can act as wrath 5,6,7,8. This allows a guaranteed wrath in hand at all times, making the goblin matchup an absolute joke.

Destavi

08-02-2005, 11:41 PM

Don't play Tivadar's Crusade! REPEAT Don't play Tivadar's Crusade! This deck already plays 4 WOGs. That is enough. You don't need to clutter up your SB with junk like that. Some much better SB options are COP: Red, Pulse of the Fields (esp if you fear Pithing Needle), Humility, Chill and so on and so forth.

morbid.

08-03-2005, 12:42 AM

Don't play Tivadar's Crusade! REPEAT Don't play Tivadar's Crusade! This deck already plays 4 WOGs. That is enough. You don't need to clutter up your SB with junk like that. Some much better SB options are COP: Red, Pulse of the Fields (esp if you fear Pithing Needle), Humility, Chill and so on and so forth.
Yeah, sorry about that... :D

Just a suggestion.

EDIT: already suggested'

FakeSpam

08-04-2005, 10:17 PM

Doesn't this deck smash Vial Goblins/Goblins anyway? WTF is the point of running Trividar's Crusade other than style points? If you really want more wrath effects (and it should be general wrath effects, btw) play Rout, or Akroma's Vengeance if it isn't main.

Seriously, this is sideboarding 101, folks. Don't run narrow sideboard cards unless the match-up is so incredibly shitty you can't win it. In this case, Solidarity. Of course, if I have to run a card in my board that I can't cast, I stop playing that deck.

P.S. This is TeenieBopper, but I'm sure you could tell. FakeSpam's comp is messed up and he has like uber cookies or something.

Danger

08-05-2005, 12:18 PM

socia02, do you run Brainstorm? And if so, why aren't you hiding the Wraths using Brainstorm so his discard can't get to them?

TorpidNinja

08-05-2005, 04:03 PM

Cabal Therapy can be an odd card to play around sometimes because people don't understand timing and announcement rules.

Realize that the card is named at the resolution of Cabal Therapy, not the announcement. This means you have to play Brainstorm without even knowing what card the opponent is targeting.

For the record though, Danger is right, and you should be drawing into sufficient cards that holding Brainstorm and using it to counter discard wont' be a problem.

troopatroop

08-05-2005, 04:07 PM

Thats assuming that you're going first, and that you have brainstorm in his hand, and you know for a fact that he's playing vial goblins instead of something like MBC where he would therapy for force. It's a cool trick, but it doesn't always happen.

pater

08-05-2005, 05:54 PM

Yeah, because you know someone is playing mono-black control when they tap a badlands to play therapy. No swamps in Vial-Gobs chief.

troopatroop

08-05-2005, 06:22 PM

yes sir. MBC plays burning wish.

Something like MBC maybe. There are other decks with badlands in them other than vial goblins you know. You don't really have solid evidence that he will therapy for wrath when he goes...

badlands
therapy

In game 1, you don't know that he's going for wrath. Just be quiet.

scrumdogg

08-05-2005, 11:14 PM

If I have a Brainstorm and Force and Wrath with an island in play...why the bloody fuck would i NOT hide the 2 killer cards from a Duress? Or Therapy? Or Hymn? Straight control is not my forte...but this seems like a no-brainer.....

Sims

08-06-2005, 12:36 AM

Yeah, because you know someone is playing mono-black control when they tap a badlands to play therapy. No swamps in Vial-Gobs chief.
Not true, actually. When I was running the Black splash in Albany due to the heavy Belcher/Solidarity/Landstill content for a while, I ran 2 Swamps mainboard to accompany the 4 Badlands. The swamps are good to fetch in the landstill matchup as they can't be wasted, thus not making Duresses and Therapies of the top dead. It also aided in casting Bidding/Death against Aggro decks running wastes and after a Wrath against Landstill.

And Scrumm, it's still dependant upon which game it is and if you know what your opponent is playing. If I've got Force, Brainstorm, Wrath, etc. in my hand with an Island in play and they cast Therapy, I might be inclined to just take the hit if I dunno what their playing. If I know (i.e, game 2) you can sure as shit bet I'm going to brainstorm the key cards to the top.

pater

08-07-2005, 07:25 PM

In game 1, you don't know that he's going for wrath. Just be quiet.
I'll just ignore your immaturity and leave it at the fact that, if you have no lands (aka, you haven't taken your first turn yet), you = SoL. If I have brainstorm + open land, I bury my shit.

Sims

08-07-2005, 07:45 PM

In game 1, you don't know that he's going for wrath. Just be quiet.
I'll just ignore your immaturity and leave it at the fact that, if you have no lands (aka, you haven't taken your first turn yet), you = SoL. If I have brainstorm + open land, I bury my shit.
Okay. Your opponent lays Swamp -> Cabal Therapy.

You have an open island and your hand is:
Brainstorm
Fetch
Force of Will
Standstill
Swords to Plowshares
Factory

What do you do? FoW it and pitch your still? Brainstorm for something better to pitch. Try to hide your "answers" which you don't even know what he's going to Therapy for? Let it hit you and then get information as to what was threatning to him and what you should be prepared for?

You cannot "bury your shit" if you don't know what you are supposed to be burying.

Slay

08-07-2005, 08:36 PM

That example is probably a bad example, because they could take any card in that hand and you still would have complete control of the game from start to finish. In that scenario I would Brainstorm hiding Standstill and Force(standstill on top). If I brainstorm into a Fact, I'll Force tossing Fact instead. Simply put, in most situations you really really care about protecting Standstill, because that's the card that wins the game against anything with discard. Aside from that, look at it from the other person's perspective. Do you care about Wrath of God or Swords to Plowshares? Or how about Force vs. Counterspell? Barring a special situations, the cards your opponent least wants to see are Force, Wrath, or Standstill. Any of those would lead to your opponent getting pissed off, and baring your opponent setting up something really complex, he's going to name the most powerful cards you could have.

But like all things Cabal Therapy, it's a judgment call both ways. If you think you can get away with it, don't hide a thing.
-Slay

pater

08-07-2005, 09:47 PM

Agreeing with Slay, Standstill is a thorn in the side of just about every deck in the format. Standstill is definitely something you want to see down second turn and is worth burying no matter what deck they may be playing.

All these theories are also under the assumption that the opponent knows you're playing Landstill. If you are playing a total stranger, and they go "Swamp, Therapy" first before you've even played a land yet, they're not gonna know what deck you're playing. It's a different situation after the Therapy resolves. The option also arises to FoW the Therapy, in which case they still don't know what you're playing (unless you pitch a completely obvious card like Standstill, which even then is used in Fish as well as Landstil). The only conclusion to be made is that the opponent is playing black and they can safely assume that you are playing blue.

Looking at CA's scenario he laid out, I would probably follow Slay's tactic. Blow my Brainstorm and A) see if there is something I wouldn't mind pitching to FoW or B) Bury my FoW and land the Standstill on top.

Another danger from Therapy we haven't looked at is it's flashback and the chance that we won't have another Brainstorm to save the day. Theoretically, they can cast Therapy 8 times in a deck whereas I can only respond with 4 Brainstorms. Especially in a deck like The Game where losing a creature doesn't hinder, or even helps their progress.

blacklotus3636

08-07-2005, 09:59 PM

I heard alot of people say alot of things about this deck and I just want to make sure they're true:
1. landstill smashes other control decks that aren't landstill
2. most (if not all) aggro decks claim a bad matchup with landstill
3. landstill naturally (like most control decks) smash combo decks
so if all this is correct what matchups are difficult for landstill?(I know this question seems stupid but I haven't heard of very many or really any played decks that beat it consistantly)

Bryant Cook

08-07-2005, 10:14 PM

BURN! that's all I've got to say. The deck's manabase is why it loses most of the time.

Destavi

08-07-2005, 10:49 PM

Burn isn't even a bad matchup. Pre siding it is but post board you bring in any number of COP: Reds and Pulse of the Fields and they lose.

I would say that Landstill has a bad match against Stax (Deck depenant, Turboland, potentially Miracle Gro or another blue based aggro control deck, and other control decks metad to beat it. I've played against other control decks that are essentially Landstill w/o Standstill; packing DoJ and Crucible they are a rough match.

pater

08-08-2005, 04:09 AM

BURN! that's all I've got to say. The deck's manabase is why it loses most of the time.
I actually went 3-1 at our Albany tourney with Landstill, and surely enough my one loss was against Burn. I also didn't have CoP:Red in my board yet (I sold my collection awhile back and have only gotten cards for specific decklists.) and I was still sitting on Chills, which just doesn't do the job, especially against Ankhs and Kegs.

Post-board it should be easier but like I said, mine wasn't up to speed.

I'll see if I can get an update this week after throwing the CoPs into sideboard.

scott_limoges

08-08-2005, 05:37 AM

Affinity and Grow are terrible matchups for landstill.

Rivs

08-08-2005, 06:46 AM

I agree Grow can give the deck fits.
But affinity? I haven't played against a version with needles yet, only with mages or with flings, and so far the only games i lost were two in which affinity laid two consecutive mages naming wrath and stp, because i wasn't mainboarding Vengeance yet.
Basically you can crucible lock them, stop their modular from triggering and generally keep them mana screwed most of the time.
I reckon needle is great for them, but i don't see what they can do to sotp the true problem card: WoG you don't care not being able to activate mishras or wastes early when you play 3 mainboard disenchant effects.
I don't mean to be rude, but i seriously am looking at my current landstill list and i can't see a card that doesn't screw up affinity, I need to know! =)

blacklotus3636

08-08-2005, 09:51 AM

so from what I seem to be hearing aggro-control is a problem for this deck?so that means:
U/G madness
Fish
Gro
unless I'm leaving one out that's about all the good aggro-control i can think of let me know if these decks fit the bill

Danger

08-08-2005, 10:29 AM

Solidarity beats landstill as well, or at the very least, its a tough match up. I also find I have difficulty against black because of the potential for early hand disruption.

pater

08-12-2005, 01:28 PM

Early hand disruption from black is a definite threat for the deck. It makes it almost vital to get the first turn because hurrying into that second land to be able to Counterspell or Mana Leak is important. That's assuming they haven't already fucked up your hand with Therapy, Duress, or the dreaded first turn Rit-Duress/Therapy-Hymnjob.

Solidarity makes for a tough match, probably a loss first game. But if you have Meddling Mage or Rule of Law sided in it tends to make the matchup better. MM naming High Tide messes their day up, so if you're Mage resolves they have to find someway of removing him. The RoL works the same way. I haven't looked at a Solidarity decklist in awhile but I'm not sure what ways they have to remove a MM 'cept maybe for Cunning Wish --> Psionic Blast? I'm not sure how they would deal with an enchantment, unless there's a splash I haven't seen.

Bryant Cook

08-12-2005, 01:45 PM

MM naming freeze first fuck high tide. The MM naming COV = GG holmes.

Ewokslayer

08-12-2005, 02:01 PM

MM naming freeze first fuck high tide. The MM naming COV = GG holmes.
What kind of janky, poor ass Solidarity build are you playing against that naming Brain Freeze is at all effective.
It almost sounds like you are playing against a deck without Cunning Wish.
Which if you are would easily explain how you can claim to have a good matchup against Solidarity.

@pater
Psionic Blast?
WTF?
Most builds of Solidarity have both Chain of Vapors and Echoing Truth in the board to bounce the mage, not to mention the possibility of Snap or Evacuation.

Sims

08-12-2005, 02:12 PM

Typically the players around here have 3 bounce spells in their board, in a range from 1-3cc to dodge CotV. Mage naming Tide messes their day up a while, if you can hold onto counter magic for the Wish. If you achieve a second Mage or a Rule of Law to stop the Wish, it's essentially GG.

pater

08-12-2005, 04:25 PM

@pater
Psionic Blast?
WTF?
Most builds of Solidarity have both Chain of Vapors and Echoing Truth in the board to bounce the mage, not to mention the possibility of Snap or Evacuation.
Like I said, I haven't looked at a Solidarity desklist in awhile.

Nevertheless, as long as you hold counters for their removal, or their Wish, it should be GG. Especially if you hit a second MM or RoL.

dsg123456789

08-12-2005, 06:50 PM

Landstill beats madness, because you have removal for their dudes, and you have a significantly better card engine. Madness can be taken down without much issue. Solidarity is not too hard if you can mulligan into counters. The plan when facing solidarity is to board in counters (preferably hard ones), and then let high tides 1 and possibly 2 resolve, so that you have the mana to counter the next 2-3 draw spells, thereby screwing them. With 2 high tides used up, solidarity should not be much of a problem to finish. Oh yea, and 4x sideboard Stifles for all the storm combo.

CoP: Red in the board makes all the bad matchups pre-board amazing post-board.

Finally, just an aside: don't ever side out all of your creature kill against a deck that you think doesn't need it (except soldiarity). Some decks run ritual-negator in the board, among other quick transforms, and you shouldn't get caught with your pants down and a 5/5 trample coming your way with no creature kill left. Ditto for Ball Lightnings and other undercosted, powerful creatures in various decks.

Zilla

08-12-2005, 07:50 PM

MM naming freeze first fuck high tide. The MM naming COV = GG holmes.
Good Solidarity players run Evacuation in their SB for this reason.

CoP: Red in the board makes all the bad matchups pre-board amazing post-board.
Wrong for a couple reasons. First, good Burn players run 4x Pithing Needle in the board for this very reason. Smart red players know that they can mana burn themselves to beat Pulse of the Fields. Chill is better red hate than CoP:Red or Pulse. Second, there are plenty of aggro decks that are strong against Landstill and don't run red: Gro, UW Fish, WTF, and GW Thresh to name a few. All blatant generalizations are wrong. [/irony]

Destavi

08-12-2005, 10:06 PM

GodzillA you make a good point about Cop Red not being as hot right now. In a vacuum it is definately the best anti red SB card. Chill doesn't stop Lackey, or Vial and can get red blasted. I don't think Chill is playable against Goblins. Against straight Burn I could see it being worthwhile but the best bet is to play a hoser that hits them both so you're not waisting SB slots.

My opinion is that a mixture of Cop Reds and Pulse of the Fields is the best bet. This configuration gives you Pulse that can be sided in against aggro control as well, while still giving you the most powerful outs against Burn and Goblins.

Needle in Goblins can be dealt with in a number of ways. If they drop an early Needle on Cop Red, there's a good chance that you wont have it in hand giving them a dead card. If you do have it in hand you can still Disenchant it, or use Pulse to stop the bleeding til you find a Disenchant or Disk. If it's later in the game and they topdeck Needle when you have Cop Red in play, you can activate it a bunch of times so they can't hurt you this turn, then Wrath on your turn w/o taking any damage.

Zilla

08-13-2005, 01:09 AM

I understand your point about Chill not doing anything to stop Lackey and Vial, but it is much, much better against Burn, which is a problem matchup for you. Vial Goblins, at least classically, is not. In fact, Landstill is likely Vial Goblins' very worst matchup amongst the upper tier. I'm an advocate of running SB cards that beat my bad matchups, not my good ones. Ask any hard core Burn player; they'll tell you that Chill is much, MUCH scarier than CoP:Red.

dsg123456789

08-13-2005, 02:45 AM

What do you think of Blue Elemental Blast in the sideboard? Do you think that it is ever warranted? Do you think that Absorb, MisD, or Mana Leak has precedence over BEB?

My Thought: I don't think that BEB is ever nessecary, because there are other, broader anti-red counterspells that you can run, and the permanent-destroying ability is not particularly relevant.

How about Stifle?

My Thought: If reasonable Storm combo is being played, you should play them, because they improve your matchup significantly (in my experience).

Finally, does anyone think a red splash is worth it because of sideboard options? I have advocated U/W Landstill for several months, but certain red cards seem like they could be very useful: Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast give you great, cheap counters for problematic blue-based aggro-control decks, and Sirocco/Pyrostatic Pillar assist your solidarity matchup. It seems like splashing for 2-3 Volcanic Island/Plateau wouldn't kill the manabase (going from 5 basics to 2/3 basics is bad, but its not the end of the world). I haven't tested this because I cannot find anyone on MWS who plays anything but shitty storm and homebrew concoctions (and CounterSliver), but it would seem at first glance that red offers interesting sideboard options.

MattH

08-14-2005, 01:00 AM

The best anti-red damage card should be Sphere of Law, no?

Zilla

08-15-2005, 04:00 PM

The best anti-red damage card should be Sphere of Law, no?
Maybe... except that you won't be hardcasting it until turn 4, by which time Burn should already have you within a few points of death. At that point, they can nickel and dime you with Bolts, PoPs, or Fireblasts for the win.

Evil Roopey

08-15-2005, 06:42 PM

Sphere of Law also doesn't answer Piledrivers and Pyromancers. Just thought I'd point it out.

Zilla

08-15-2005, 07:18 PM

Sphere of Law also doesn't answer Piledrivers and Pyromancers. Just thought I'd point it out.
Yeah, I was thinking of mentioning that too. Then again, StP's, WoG's, and countermagic do answer those threats. The thing is, in my mind, Goblins is the less relevant deck for Landstill to be making sideboarding plans against. It already has at least a 50/50 game against it. Burn, on the other hand, is a very bad matchup for Landstill, so it would seem that's where you want to be concentrating your hate.

This is why Chill is likely the best red hate for Landstill, in my opinion. It hurts Burn a LOT, and it's rather effective against Goblins too if you're running Pithing Needles in the board. Needle, incidentally, is also strong against the rising numbers of Rishadan Ports finding their way into Goblins builds of late, which is one of the main reasons why Goblins is doing decently against Landstill at tournaments.

LinkXwing

08-15-2005, 11:31 PM

Though not nearly as relevant in the past year to year and a half, Psychatog/Hulk decks have always given Landstill fits. This is purely because of the overwhelming card advantage engine that Hulk packs over Landstill plus Duress, plus the versitle Cunning wish for answers such as Shallow Grave, Mana Short and the even rarer Back to Basics. Plus some build play red and REB too.

Landstill needs to play aggro and kill Hulk before a lethal tog comes down with relevant counter backup and Landstill isn't known for it's amazingly fast clock...

Slay

08-16-2005, 12:26 AM

You should be able to power through Hulk easily. They have no answer to Standstill and you can easily play beatdown while they try and amass an awesome hand. Post-sb things get a bit more difficult but their manabase is crap and wasteland is a HOUSE against them.
-Slay

LinkXwing

08-16-2005, 01:50 AM

You should be able to power through Hulk easily. They have no answer to Standstill and you can easily play beatdown while they try and amass an awesome hand. Post-sb things get a bit more difficult but their manabase is crap and wasteland is a HOUSE against them.
-Slay
Landstill's Draw: Hulk's Draw:
4 Standstill 1-3 Intuition
2-4 FoF 4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm 4 Brainstorm
0-3 Thirst for Knowledge
0-3 Deep Analysis
3 Cunning Wish
3 Fact or Fiction (1 SB)
(1 Fact + 1 other Draw card SB)

Hmmm...Any builds of Hulk that can run around 10 basics and can support Back to Basics I don't think will get wrecked by wasteland, sir.

Hulk has no answer to standstill short of Duress, Counterspell, Force of Will or an early Deed. Landstill has no answer to 20+ Draw spells short of Counterspell and Force of Will. Landstill has 4 Swords, 2-4 Wrath of God, 0-4 Vengence/Disk, and 2-4 Disenchant as essential dead cards game 1. And you said yourself that games 2 and 3 get harder for Landstill.

All I'm saying is that Hulk seems to be the only Control deck in the format that can consistantly beat Landstill, somewhere around 70-30 or 60-40. However, Hulk in it's current incarnations loses to random crap while Landstill does not.

Ewokslayer

08-16-2005, 10:26 AM

I am not really seeing a standard Hulk build as a threat to Landstill.
Landstill has plenty of answers to Hulk's only threat; Tog (They are Swords, Vengence, Wrath, Counterspell, Force, Crucible + Factory).
Hulk only has one real answer to Landstill's main threats; Deed and no answer to dragon. Deed while great can be played around fairly easily, Disenchanted, or Stifled.
So, while Hulk might end up drawing more cards in a given game, they unforunately all suck.

plus the versitle Cunning wish for answers such as Shallow Grave, Mana Short and the even rarer Back to Basics
Wishing for Back to Basics would in fact be quite savage.

dsg123456789

08-16-2005, 05:02 PM

In my meta, I play primarily against Goblins, with a bit of Stax Control and ATSurvival, as well as Random Decks (i.e. Enchantress, Tendrils, and other not-so-great decks).

Wishing for Back to Basics would in fact be quite savage.
Savage cheating, anyway. I don't know that he was meaning to say that you could Wish for it though. I think he was using B2B and Wish as examples of how to bumfuck Landstill's strategy. The wording was just a bit fucked.

LinkXwing

08-17-2005, 06:33 AM

Wishing for Back to Basics would in fact be quite savage.
Savage cheating, anyway. I don't know that he was meaning to say that you could Wish for it though. I think he was using B2B and Wish as examples of how to bumfuck Landstill's strategy. The wording was just a bit fucked.
You would be correct in that assumption sir, though I admit, the wording was fucked.

pater

08-18-2005, 10:41 AM

The debate between Chill and CoP:red is a tricky one because no one wants to put both in sideboard since it takes up alot of space.

I have played games against Burn where Chill has helped prolong the game and helped me net a second one to put the nail in the coffin, yet if you only get one Chill out a game it helps, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee a win.

CoP:red works better against Vial Gobs cuz you can just prevent all day then Wrath. It works better than Chill in this matchup because they have Vial to work around it.

I guess the debate is meta-based.

Destavi

08-18-2005, 09:19 PM

One important thing is to consider is if Burn is going to be playing Needle in their board. I don't keep up with the archetype so I have no idea. If they typically aren't playing needle I'd just stick with the Cop, because they definately play REB that can kill Chill. But now with Goblins playing Needle, I've changed my SB strategy so I side in Pulse, Teferi's Response (take that Port!) and Humility. I'm not sure on Humility though, I'm banking on the fact that most Goblins decks are going to be mono Red as Needle and Goblin King take care of most of their problems. If anyone can confirm or deny this I'd be much obliged.

scarface

08-18-2005, 11:47 PM

Yeah, I think that monored is becoming more common now, though I still see r/w in my meta, but they're not relying just on Pithing Needle and Goblin King. I think the guy who took 3rd in Big Arse II was running 4 ruination. I don't know if that card's been mentioned on this thread, but should it be something for landstill players to worry about?

Oh, and about humility ... That card is great against goblins and is more flexible than COP Red for stopping aggro (though it doesnt do much againts burn). Yes, it can be disenchanted by r/w goblins, but COP Red and chill are just as vulnerable. I'd run 2 humilities and 3 COP red in the board, just because burn is a worse matchup than aggro in my opinion.

Zilla

08-19-2005, 01:33 AM

The bottom line, really, is that as far as dedicated anti-red hate goes, Chill is simply the better choice of CoP:Red, but neither is necessarily the only correct choice. The reason that I say that Chill is the better of the two is because it's not shut off by Pithing Needle, and because it is much better against Burn, which is Landstill's real problem matchup. Goblins can be tough, but it's a pretty good matchup, even pre-board. Burn, on the other hand, is a very bad matchup, so it's clearly the matchup upon which you want to be concentrating the most hate as far as red decks are concerned.

xenoq

08-19-2005, 01:49 AM

I hear Chalice really beats the shit out of Burn.

Good game.

and uh, it doesn't take mana to use, it doesn't take a dump to Needle, it comes down on turn 2, and it can't be REB'd

Zilla

08-19-2005, 01:52 AM

The bottom line, really, is that as far as dedicated anti-red hate goes, Chill is simply the better choice of CoP:Red, but neither is necessarily the only correct choice. The reason that I say that Chill is the better of the two is because it's not shut off by Pithing Needle, and because it is much better against Burn, which is Landstill's real problem matchup. Goblins can be tough, but it's a pretty good matchup, even pre-board. Burn, on the other hand, is a very bad matchup, so it's clearly the matchup upon which you want to be concentrating the most hate as far as red decks are concerned.
Shitty burn, maybe. I've playtested against Landstill with Chalice in the board and it only delays the inevitable. Modern Burn builds are running a well spread curve, and can play around Chalice without a great deal of difficulty at all. Chill is much worse for it in my experience.

scarface

08-19-2005, 02:46 AM

I agree that chill can be just as effective, if not more effective, as COP Red against burn. However, I think that REBs are way more prevalent in side boards than pithing needle, and they allow red to destroy chill without splashing for naturalize/disenchant. Plus, you can destroy a pithing needle, but the only way to stop REB is with a counter.

Also, I like chalice because its flexible, but it's just not enough to shut down a burn deck. The debate should definitely be between chill and COP REd.

Zilla

08-19-2005, 09:07 PM

I agree that chill can be just as effective, if not more effective, as COP Red against burn. However, I think that REBs are way more prevalent in side boards than pithing needle, and they allow red to destroy chill without splashing for naturalize/disenchant. Plus, you can destroy a pithing needle, but the only way to stop REB is with a counter.
I don't know that I agree about REB being more prevalent than Pithing Needle. More and mroe, you're likely to see Needle represented accross the board, I think. Even so, the bottom line is this: while a REB requires a counter to stop it, it forces your opponent to be reactive as opposed to proactive. That is to say, your opponent can play Needle first turn, regardless of whether or not you have the mana and the countermagic to stop it. With REB, the control is in your hands. If you play Chill when the Burn opponent is tapped out (which occurs fairly often), then they actually have to build to 3 mana before they can cast their REB. This gives you more time to a) find a counter, b) have UU open to cast a Counterspell or c) cast a second Chill for the win.

Speaking from the opposite side of the table (as a Burn player with REBs and Needles in the board), I'm much more afraid of Chill. This is for the aforementioned reason that the threat of Chill forces me to leave a red mana untapped at all times (which sucks), and because, even if I don't have Needle, I can play around CoP:Red by waiting for my opponent to (mostly) tap out and alpha strike with a fistful of Burn.

Anusien

08-19-2005, 09:37 PM

I don't think you should be losing to Tog with Landstill. Considering how flexible the deck is, it's hard to talk about the "average Landstill" deck, so I'm going to base this off UWR. Take what applies to you:

First off, Tog suffers the BBS problem versus Landstill - Landstill can counter Togs, but Tog can't counter Factories, and most/all Tog lists omit Wastelands. You have Crucible to go infinite blocking with Factories, save Berserk (which can be countered), and they have at most 4 Togs, plus a few piddly Regrowth effects (that none run). If you run Red, your spells act like discard on them - Fire will trade with a card and Bolt will take two from their hand or 4 from their graveyard. Then you can Swords them out, and if you have any white, chances are you have at least 3 Swords to Plowshares. You also have some number of wrath effects to get rid of Tog and optionally Deed if it becomes an issue. If it comes down to a race, Ice will Fog them, and don't forget that they can't break through manlands without Fling or Berserk.

Losing to Tog is your fault, especially since the answers are abundant. With the Landstill mirror looking to be more and more common (hello GenCon), failing to be prepared for it is your fault. Some number of Red Blasts in the side is just a good idea, and your access to red is probably much more stable than Tog's, because that deck has to hit 4 colors to keep up, where you only need 3. You get rid of Disks for stuff like Humility, REB and Cursed Totem - all great hosers against Tog. Because the typical Legacy tog deck has to run so much anti-aggro it really can't afford to devote enough slots to you to beat you.

You have something like
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
All your burn that forces discard
0-3 Mana Leak

All of which means that they don't outgun you in the hand/permission war, especially when you get Eternal Dragon to go nuts with.

frogboy

08-20-2005, 02:50 AM

Alternatively the Tog player could play right and go Duress Fact or Fiction you a bunch and not drop the Tog until they have like ten cards in their library or something. The Romao Plan doesn't work against Legacy Tog because the draw engine is so much more powerful than it was in In/Od/7th, and so you're going to get massively outdrawn and your counters will become irrelevant.

Tog almost never needs access to green mana in control mirrors. The only situation I can think of offhand where I'd actively go get it would be crucible + factory and if I'm getting a Wish at that point Rack and Ruin or some similar nuke artifacts spell is a lot better.

Bargoth

08-20-2005, 04:12 AM

I'm not positive, but I think that in the past Tog has been concidered the deck of choice to go against opposing control decks.

Unless I'm missing something big in reguards to Fire/Ice or the Tog player is an absolute moron, Fire/Ice is rarely going to serve as effective discard. As the Tog player would be choosing what they discard most likely a spare land or a dead card in the match up. Additionally Tog should be running some sac-lands, probably Brainstorm, Counters... In other words they will have some crap in their graveyard that they can remove to pump the Tog if they feel that the one in play needs to stay alive.

You run roughly the same number of counters (some additional Duresses/Mana Leaks). Each deck plays some global reset (Wrath/Deed). As far as I know both builds ues a few Fire/Ice, which is pretty much a dead card on both sides, but it can Fog for the Landstill player and kill Conclaves for the Tog player. Then Landstill has additional lands, Crucibles, Standstills, and Plows. Where as Tog has AKs, Cunning Wishes, Deep Analysis, and Intuition. I would think these two decks would match up fairly evenly. Though Tog does have a bit more drawing power, and the drawing cards is what wins games.

EDIT:

After reading through my post I wanted to mention that I do not think that Tog is a better choice for a control deck in this format. Tog has alot worse match ups vs many of Landstill's good ones. I was only suggesting that it is very possible that Tog does do well vs Landstill. Given the fact that Tog isn't really played in 1.5 I dont see it as a major concern for Landstill.

3. Don't worry about the Tog matchup, if that's even a matchup that is said to exist.

4. Cunning Wish for Back to Basics is teh sVg 7ech.

5. Sphere of Law, Stifle, BEB, Faerie Conclave and Pithing Needle should not be in the SB. nuff said

6. Watch out for Ruination in Goblins' SB.

7. Humility is good stuff (must play DoJ in conjunction).

GodzillA what's your opinion of Pulse of the Fields in general, and in the Burn matchup in particular? I like it alot because you can play it against so many archetypes. You can side it in against Aggro-Control (it shines here), Goblins, Burn, and Random Aggro.dec.

Also, if anyone has any thoughts on the MD I'd like to hear them. Currently I play Disk as I find Vengeance too slow and Disk is a weapon in the mirror. As for secondary win conditions I just started playing 2x DoJs in the MD and I like them. DoJ's synergy with Humility is what really pushed it over the top for me. I've also dropped FoF completely and replaced it with DoJs. I play the full compliment of WoGs (needed against aggro control) 2 Disks and 2 Mana Leaks.

Bargoth

08-20-2005, 05:37 AM

Currently I play Disk as I find Vengeance too slow and Disk is a weapon in the mirror.
I don't really see how they help that much in the mirror. I guess for times when they have man lands and you don't you can try to resolve a Disk to buy time until they find Disenchant or attack into it. It seems like the ability to just cycle Akroma's Vengance would be the more efficient way to finding an answer to opposing manlands.

Any other use that Disk has, like killing Crucible or DoJ tokens, Vengance deals with the turn it is drawn as opposed to giving them an extra turn with the threat in play. But I guess the Disk vs Vengance arguement is sort of played out, so go with whatever has been working for you.

On a sidenote I would think cutting Fof would put alot of added stress on getting Standstills into play as they become your only form of drawing. How has it been working for you?

pater

08-20-2005, 11:33 AM

Akroma's Vengeance - Pros - Can be Mystical Tutored for, doesn't have to wait a turn, can be cycled if dead
- Cons - Can be countered, costs 2 more

Nev's Disk - Pros - post-effect costs 1 less, can't be countered if resolved
- Cons - being an artifact makes it easily targettable, has to sit for a turn, can be a dead card at times, no Mystical Tutor

I would personally rather have Akroma's Vengeance, mostly because I run the M Tutors in my deck. If you don't then I'd say go with Disk.

dsg123456789

08-20-2005, 04:25 PM

At the moment, I run 4 wrath and 3 Vengeance for sweepers, as well as 2 DoJ, 2 FoF, and no maindeck Crucibles. I run u/w with 24 lands, 5 of which are basic (3 plains, 2 islands).

The Faerie Conclave is for the Landstill and Control mirror, as are the Crucibles. The Pulses and Chills are obvious (somewhat), and the pithing needle and Gaea's Blessings are just what I was trying out. Their 5 slots can go to humility, additional DoJs, additional counters, and other possible cards as well. The needles are primarily there to come in against vial goblins, naming port and vial, to complement Chill in locking them out of the game.

MattH

08-20-2005, 09:15 PM

Wouldn't Meddling Mage be much better than Gaea's Blessing to side vs. Tide?

scarface

08-21-2005, 01:52 AM

Wouldn't Meddling Mage be much better than Gaea's Blessing to side vs. Tide?

If you see a lot of spring tide/solidarity in your meta, then you should run stifles over mages or blessings, as the mage can just be bounced and the blessings are dead if you draw them. However, if there are only a few solidarity decks and you don't consider them a big threat, I'd go with the mages because they are much more flexible and can be boarded against all combo and survival decks.

As far as the CoP: Red vs. Chill debate, I conceed that chill is superior if pithing needles are really becoming as common in burn sideboards as reb. In my meta, a pithing needle in sligh is a pretty rare sight, but in the average meta things could be much different.

Pulse is great because it doesn't get stopped by needle/reb, and its usable against aggro decks that aren't red. However, I think the card is just too slow against a deck like goblins thats able to dish out 30 damage by turn 4. Of course, I haven't tested pulse at all, so I could be totally wrong. Maybe just have a couple copies in the board to compliment more specific hate like COP or chill.

lynxcat

08-21-2005, 04:04 AM

Has anyone tried out Rule of Law for the Solidarity matchup? I you resolve it, all you have to do is hold up counter mana for their bounce and you win - nothing they can do. I haven't been able to test it yet, but it looks like a very solid option.

Bargoth

08-21-2005, 05:00 AM

Has anyone tried out Rule of Law for the Solidarity matchup? I you resolve it, all you have to do is hold up counter mana for their bounce and you win - nothing they can do. I haven't been able to test it yet, but it looks like a very solid option.
Arcane Lab would be even better as it does the same thing and is in the primary color. Extras can be pitched to FoW as well. My assumption would be that it has been tested. But yeah it does seem powerful as long as the Solidarity player doesn't mainboard/side in any bounce, as they could let it resolve and then bounce it the same turn and you couldn't counter. It definitely seems better than Gaea's Blessing for the two slots anyway. Stifle does have alot more uses then either card though.

scarface

08-21-2005, 10:43 PM

Is there somewhere I can go to see the results of the legacy championship? If not, does anyone know how landstill fared? I know only one person played Landstill at the Grand Prix trial during Nationals weekend, which I thought was very interesting. Is the deck losing popularity for some reason?

Roberto Clemente

08-21-2005, 10:47 PM

From what I heard from someone I know who played in the event, a Goblin Sligh deck won the thing. That's about all I know, though.

cpt_ginu

08-21-2005, 11:29 PM

I know Zvi played landstill and made it to the top 4 losing to goblins and the finals was goblins (not sure if sligh or vial) vs sligh, I rolled the sligh player in round 6 (yeah baloths are good versus burn) but lost in round 7 putting me out of top 8. As for popularity i played 2 landstill variants in the swiss (beating both) and one of them made the top 8 meaning he won out from there in, but my friends playing in the event played at least a combined total of 5 versions in the swiss rounds out of 14 matches, so it was well represented (at east at the top tables). Zvi's deck from what i saw ran 2 dragons 2 decrees main and the sb had 2 crypts as well as 4 cop:reds and 4 pulses. These arn't for sure but it gives an idea.

Odd Mutation

08-22-2005, 08:52 PM

Hi All,

Recently I played in a Legacy tournement (35 players) and brought my Landstill deck. I'm really confident of my deck which has a slightly different build then the one for discussion here... I didn't have any problems facing several different decks (mirror, strange Green, Belcher) except for my only two 1-2 losses: Vial Goblins.

My friend, who also plays Landstill, and I got a bit frustrated as we don't seem to win against the small green men. So naturally we're looking for great sideboard choices to deal with this nuisance. With the entrance of Pithing Needle I prefered Chill as a sideboard option. It has it's advantages and disadvantages...

Advantages:
------------
* It isn't affected by the Needle
* It pitches to Force of Will (which is important)
* If more then one hits the table you'll have the red mage locked out of the game safe for the Vial.

Disadvantages:
---------------
* It gets destroyed/countered by REB and/or Pyroblast
* It doesn't offer complete protection unless you get more then one out.

In short, my experience at the tournement tells me that Chill is not enough...

For the moment I'm looking to fix the problem with all manner of options: Hydroblast, Circle of Protection, ...

Recently I'm looking to creatures with protection from red to do the job: Galina's Knight, Silver Knight. Problem with Galina's Knight is that it is blue... and Piledriver has protection from Blue!!! It looks so random and unimportant, the protection from blue on the Piledriver, but it has such a great impact on this matchup! You can't BEB nor Hydroblast it!!! So now I'm looking if I can get Silver Knight out fast enough and consistently enough...

If you can hold on to your life long enough, Vedalken Shackles will win you the game! I'm playing two main deck now and one in the side. They are really great and I sorely missed them at the tournement. There were a lot of times I would have prefered them over the two Disks I ran (I believe them better then Vengeance). When the dust had settled and we were all friends again, the better of the Goblin players, placing first and second (!), agreed that Shackles was very annoying for them.

How do you guys deal with this matchup? Is there anyone who has effectively tested this matchup and has come up with a solid sollution? I'm asking this because I don't agree with Godzilla ('though I'm always happy to read his posts as I value them as being some of the most interesting and correct): Vial Goblins is a problem matchup. It has problem cards like Lackey (answer him fast), Vial (deal with it before it reaches 4 counters and even before it's troublesome), Wasteland and Rishadan Port (they slow you down long enough for them to get more time to kill you fast) and Piledriver. They have great card drawing in Goblin Ringleader and one of my 'team mates' plays with Armageddon main... To top it all off, the deck can kill you in three turns if they draw a great hand (one of my Vial opponents did it at the tournement), four turns if it's 'just a normal hand'. The only games I won was when I had two Chills out but that's too narrow to count on to be comfortable sitting across a Vial Goblins player. I really want to find a way to increase my chances because I think we will see more of this deck in the future.

Greetings,

Odd Mute.

impulsecontrol

08-22-2005, 09:25 PM

In the top 4's listed there is mostly 4c landstill, and it seems to be doing pretty well. So lets get right to the point, I've really only seen U/W, R/U, and R/U/W builds, so if someone could put up a link so I can see the 4C version. And out of curiousity, is it really that much better then the U/W version that is mostly shown on the site? Thanks.

scarface

08-22-2005, 10:45 PM

How do you guys deal with this matchup? Is there anyone who has effectively tested this matchup and has come up with a solid sollution? I'm asking this because I don't agree with Godzilla ('though I'm always happy to read his posts as I value them as being some of the most interesting and correct): Vial Goblins is a problem matchup. It has problem cards like Lackey (answer him fast), Vial (deal with it before it reaches 4 counters and even before it's troublesome), Wasteland and Rishadan Port (they slow you down long enough for them to get more time to kill you fast) and Piledriver. They have great card drawing in Goblin Ringleader and one of my 'team mates' plays with Armageddon main... To top it all off, the deck can kill you in three turns if they draw a great hand (one of my Vial opponents did it at the tournement), four turns if it's 'just a normal hand'. The only games I won was when I had two Chills out but that's too narrow to count on to be comfortable sitting across a Vial Goblins player. I really want to find a way to increase my chances because I think we will see more of this deck in the future.

Greetings,

Odd Mute.
To deal with goblins specifically, I believe humility is your best bet, especially since most goblins are shifting away from color splashing and have no answer to this enchantment aside from anarchy. Tividar's Crusade is also effective, but I think it's way too focused to have a place in a sideboard--you want cards that are good against multiple matchups.

pater

08-22-2005, 11:18 PM

Mute, if you want to see some of our answers to red in general, look at the last few pages of this thread. We note Chill, CoP:red, and other cards against Goblins and other red matchups.

Destavi

08-23-2005, 12:33 AM

I'm in a similar situation to Odd Mutation unfortunately. I had figured out the Goblin matchup, or at least, I thought I had. Game 1 is 55/45 with games 2 and 3 being very lobsided in my favor with Cop:Red. Well now with Pithing Needle the matchup has gone downhill. I haven't extensively tested the match with Needles post sideboard though. Jitte has also made the matchup worse. Game one is now in their favor it seems as we don't have enough Disenchant effects to go around; ie. do you hit the Jitte or the Aether Vial?

I've got a few ideas on how to turn the match back in our favor. You could side in the Cop:Reds as per usual and side in more Disenchant effects to kill their Needles and ride the Cops to victory. As stated before this is worse for us as they just lay down the Needle and keep going. This forces Landstill to find the answer instead of the other way around as was the case with their white splash. Another way to go would be to forego the Cops entirely and play Pulse of the Fields and Humility. Humility is great because it essentially counters Aether Vial too. A drawback to this is that you have to be playing DoJ, and Pulse may be too slow.

The problem with the Goblin matchup is that there are so many different threats Goblin decks can play that it makes it very hard to know what to expect. They could be playing Rishadan Port, Jitte, Disenchant, REB, or Pithing Needle. It seems like Mono Red is in vogue, but I don't know how many of them play Port and Jitte.

Another complication is deciding what to take out from the MD. I think its clear that Disk/Vengeance should be removed. Aside from that there are no easy cuts. What are your guys' thoughts?

scarface

08-23-2005, 01:35 AM

As far as I can see, there's no reason to take out disk/vengeance when you're talking about boarding in more disenchant effects--just use one of those to remove all the jittes, vials, and needles all at once (oh yeah, and creatures too!). I know they're a bit slow, but those board sweepers are in there chiefly to deal with aggro decks that overextend, so if you're gonna board them out against goblins why are you running them in the first place? I'd more quickly board out dragons (if you run them) and possibly crucibles. Also, with the decline of white splash, Humility is pretty much game if it hits the table, and most landstill decks run DoJ anyway.

Odd Mutation

08-23-2005, 07:55 AM

Mute, if you want to see some of our answers to red in general, look at the last few pages of this thread. We note Chill, CoP:red, and other cards against Goblins and other red matchups.
Well yes, I've read them and tried all of it and it just isn't enough... I feel you're still at the disadvantage. I only haven't tried Humility but I'm doubtfull it wil solve your problems. It comes down turn four if you're a bit lucky (it is four mana and it requires double white) and then still, there are a lot of Goblins on the other side! 1/1's for sure but seven of them still do 7 damage. And you're tapped out turn four against Goblins, not something you like to do. At first glance I feel Moat is a better option then. If they run disenchant, both options will get you killled.

Actually I don't understand why they would do away with the white splash. It doesn't hurt the deck too much in my opinion. So I expect them to play Disenchant. That's why I was looking for a creature based solution. Pro Red should take you a long way. If You can negate the Piledrivers you're in better shape. Yes, Lackey and Ringleader are problematic but you'd be amazed how good Shackles is! If I was to board in creatures, I would complement them with some Hydroblasts. Together they will hold back the goblin army long enough for your Shackles to become magic, I think... I'm trying it at least.

I think I still prefer Circle of protection: Red over Chill. Chill doesn't stop the damage and the circle cannot be countered/destroyed with REB or Pyroblast. Just be sure to take care of the Needles! I also board in two extra Disenchant (with two main deck already) for the Needles. I don't like the Vials but Needle is a lot worse if you play COP: Red.

If the creature solution doesn't work, and I don't have high hopes, I think I'll go with the COP: Red. In my experience it's better to prevent damage and Wrath the board clean if it gets to big. Just be careful that next turn the Goblin player doesn't go: Piledriver, Piledriver, Warchief... Keep a counter ready for the Warchief!

I still feel it is a difficult matchup and a very good deck. I don't like it but now it looks like Vial Goblins will be the nemesis matchup for Landstill. I didn't have any problems with other decks, you're capable to win them all except for the green army of doom. I seem to be able to just win one out of three and that isn't good enough because we will get to see more of this deck I'm sure.

@ Scarface: Agreed you want more disenchant effects but the ones you suggest just take too long to come down! I don't want to see an Akroma's Vengeance against Goblins! Six mana!!! When facing 4 Wasteland and 4 Rishadan Ports... I would prefer Disk any time but it will also take four turns and will do its job turn five. Way too late in my experience. I was playing Disks main but changed them to Shackles now and I feel better.

Greetings,

Odd Mute.

scarface

08-23-2005, 10:29 AM

How about warmth? It isn't vulnerable to pithing needle or reb, and it buys you time to build up mana for those slower board sweepers. Plus, it shuts down burn decks, which I find to be nearly as scary a matchup as goblins.

Note: If this post appears twice, it's because something went wrong the first time and I thought it got deleted.

Odd Mutation

08-23-2005, 10:51 AM

Scarface,

Remember that when they Vial out a creature or put it into play with Lackey you get nothing. I don't know but I will try and test it as soon as I have the opportunity.

Odd Mute.

mulder

08-23-2005, 12:52 PM

I would put 4 Elemental Blasts in the Sb, together with a few Hydroblasts. That should slow them down long enough. The Blasts also kill first turn Lackeys, and if not you also have 4 STP's available.
The biggest problem I encountered was that you couldn't get any board advantage so you can't cast your Standstills. With the help of the Blasts that might change, but I haven't tested it yet.

Cop is not good enough since it's too mana intensive and dies to Needle and Disenchant.
Moat is not good enoug because it's too slow, dies to disenchant and requires you to play Dragons (since Conclaves die to Sharpshooters and landdestruction).
Wrath of God is a decent answer, be it somewhat costly.
But I'm still gonna try the 4 Hydroblasts and 4 Beb's , because Landstill can win against almost anything except for Vial Goblins. It hurts me to cripple my SB like that, but it's necessary.

Then there's the question: what to take out? In my version: Crucibles (tapping out on turn three for a card that does very little is not good), Disks (too slow), Cunning Wish (I play them) are viable contenders, but you have to remember that when you plan to put 8 cards in the deck, you also have to take 8 out and some decks just don't have room for that.
And Shackles are great, I can't see why other players don't use it. You can even use it to steal your opponent's manlands, so it's almost never a dead card.

dsg123456789

08-23-2005, 04:22 PM

I would side out Fact or Fiction and Eternal Dragon when playing against goblins, as well as DoJ, Crucible, or Vengeance, depending on your sideboard plan/maindeck configuration. DoJ comes out (turn 5-7 answer) unless you side Humility, Crucible comes out if you maindeck it (you shouldn't, its dead against Goblins, who are Public Enemy #1), and Vengeance comes out if you run the Chill/Needle Plan. Pulse of the Fields should just always come in, it slows them down by 3-4 turns at least (run as a 2-of). At this point in time, Chill/Needle/Pulse seems like the best sideboard option, because the needles are very useful against the now-commonly-maindecked Port/Wasteland assault (which is one reason Goblins has a better matchup than before against Landstill), not to mention the fact that Needles stop Vial. Chill is good because it can be very useful against Burn as well. Lastly, sideboarding 2-3 Enlightened Tutors could be a possibility, in order to get 2 chills by turn 3-4 more consistently. My board, with the maindeck listed in the first post, would look something like this, going against a Survival-light, Goblins-heavy meta (i.e. Everywhere):

2 Pulse of the Fields
4 Chill
3 Pithing Needle
3 Crucible
3 E. Tutor

With that brainstorm out of the way, I think that it is time again to consider maindecking E.Tutor, with a tiny toolbox, to aide in the difficult goblins matchup. Humility in game 1? That would be hot, even if it isn't Post-Board. Thats my thoughts on the nasty little red shits.

Edit: I just tested several games pre- and post- board with E. Tutor, and Humility is bad. It doesn't stop goblins. They will just cast some 1/1s and beat you down, b/c you cannot keep up with their onslaught, and turn 4 is too slow. On the other hand, Chill, CoP:Red, and E. Tutor pre/post board is a wrecking ball. They can play around one or two or them, but with pithing needle stoping many of their key threats in the mathup, combined with 3-4 enchantment hosers hitting the board, aggressive mulliganing will carry the game again and again.

Nightmare

08-23-2005, 05:23 PM

I'll say it again. With the rise of the goblin dominance, Tivadar's Crusade is a viable contender for 2-3 SB slots. I'm pretty sure my SB for gobs (and burn, by association) is going to be

That gives you 9 Board Sweepers, plus 4 Swords and 3 Disenchant. The combination of COP and Chill has been great, if you can keep Lackey and Vial under wraps (not that hard with 8 counters and all the removal) the Chills really are MVPish. I've tested about 10 games so far, and it looks like enough to make the match pretty favorable. White mana is always an issue, because it is, but its a lot harder for them to Alpha Strike when its impossible for them to overcommit to the board.

scarface

08-23-2005, 06:20 PM

How about reverence instead of moat or humility? You can also board in something cheaper like beb or chill to slow them down enough to drop the reverence, though this might be too many cards in the sb to devote to one deck.

midnightAce

08-23-2005, 06:41 PM

I don't think Landstill's problem resides in killing Goblins. It's the fact that you have to tap out on turn 4 for Wrath, and they respond by dropping a Ringleader and refill their hand and ready to go at it again.

I have a quick question, how many Stifles do you guys run between main and SB? If any at all. Stifles can act as psudo-counters against Goblin decks. Stifling a Ringleader for example, turns it into a 4cc 2/2 Haste that gets chumped by Factory. Stifles can help combat Wasteland. It can turn Matron into 3cc 1/1, and it has uses against Solidarity and a variety of the fields. Stopping fetchland is also another way of denying Goblin splash decks their splash colour, allowing Humility to do its job and turn Goblins into 1/1 dorks that gets chumped by DoJ all day long.

The other way of dealing with Goblins is the shift in colour. In my own meta, I begin to see URW Landstills more so than UW. While weaker in mana base, the addition of Fire/Ice and Bolts really packs a punch against Goblins. Most of them will now be FORCED to overextend, thereby walking into a Wrath with heavy casulties.

Zilla

08-23-2005, 08:35 PM

I'm not much of a Landstill player myself, but I did some testing with TB awhile back with him playing Vial Goblins with Ports and Jittes, and my SB contained 3x Chill and 3x Angel. It worked rather well, actually. If you're looking for an SB solution, it may be worth considering. Because the newer builds are running Ports, their red mana count is lower than ever before. This means that, assuming you can keep Needles off the table with countermagic and/or Disenchants, you will stunt their development greatly with Chill. Follow that up with a quick, difficult-to-remove clock like Angel, and it's not that difficult to seal the game. Often, it's not that big a risk to drop a turn 3 morph against Goblins, because they only have 3-4 Incinerators as an answer.

In any case, the combination worked well for me, but I certainly wouldn't say that I've tested the matchup to be sure it's a consistent answer. I suggest trying Angel in conjunction with some other form of hate, though, be it Chill, CoP:Red, Absolute Law or whatever.

Another card to consider would be Wing Shards. It's super underrated. Remember that Goblins operates by dropping multiple threats in a single turn, and then attacking with multiple hasted threats. Their method of play has a tendency to build Storm count for you, and they absolutely have to play aggressively to race your board sweepers, and so Shards really has an opportunity to shine here. Additionally, it's playable on thrid turn, which buys you the time you need to gain the late game advantage with WoG's, Vengences, and FoF's. The card is highly underrated. It deserves testing for the Goblins matchup.

Goblins and Burn are obviously very strong from the results they've put up. This sb should turn those matchups into a joke. Thats the SB I would play.

dsg123456789

08-23-2005, 09:19 PM

I think that midnightAce hit it right on the money: Landstill's problems DO NOT reside in killing goblins. I know that I can wrath goblins 2-3 times per game, however, I still do not beat them enough. I think that CoP, Pulse, and Chill will shut them out of the match entirely, allowing your pseudo-lock to win. Reverence also deserves a look. On the flip side, if we modify Landstill to beat goblins so much, would it be better just to switch decks? Temporary Solution-esqe decks would obviously have a better game against goblins. I'm going to continue testing Landstill with various enchantment-based answers to Goblins, and I will report back on how the matchups turned out, as well as how other matchups were affected.

Zilla

08-23-2005, 09:29 PM

That's waaaaay too much red hate. I realize that red poses problems, but seriously, dedicating that much hate to these matchups seems a bit overboard. If the real problem is Goblins' recovery from mass removal via Ringleader, why is Stifle not being discussed as an SB option? It was always a strong choice against FCG, and there's no reason it shouldn't be here as well. It turns Matron into ino a 3cc Mons' Goblin Raider, it prevent Lackey trigger, temporarily deals with Vial while you dig for a way to remove it permanently, and prevents Ringleader card advantage. On top of all that, it has merit against a great deal of the rest of the field.

scarface

08-23-2005, 09:42 PM

Considering that stifle is so effective against both goblins and solidarity, why don't landstill players just mainboard them? It certainly has uses against the other tier one decks as well, such as ATS and in the mirror. When would a stifle really be dead? Angel stompy? I don't think thats such a bad matchup anyway. I'm not sure what I would take out of the standard landstill build, but maybe it would be wise to make room for this card.

dsg123456789

08-23-2005, 10:04 PM

I believe I have found our holy grail. Reverance. This enchantment slows goblins down by 5 or more turns, enough time to wrath, get counters online, and begin beats with eternal dragon or angel tokens. These are the key points of the modification I propose:
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

The maindeck Reverance/Crucible offers more flexibility game one, assisting against both control and Goblins/Small-Creature Aggro. The sideboard strenghens your hate against goblins, allowing you do morph into a deck that locks them out, depending on their build. The Crucibles remain to keep control as a favorable matchup. Pulse of the Fields and Reverance can turn around the game against many aggressive decks, and an effective 6 copies of Pithing Needle plus Brainstorms makes Survival and Belcher cry. Chill are CoP are primarily for Goblins, but they obviously neutralize burn and can help (as 1-ofs, depending on the circumstances) against RGSA. I think that this can help turn around Landstill's poor matchup against Goblins. By the way, did I mention that Reverance owns Goblins?

troopatroop

08-23-2005, 10:20 PM

Is COP:Red really that good? We've heard alot about goblins just laying down the beats while the opponent tries to topdeck a second WOG. I heard Zvi lost in that fasion. wouldn't Tivadar's in addition to COP:Red in the SB wipe that matchup clean? I'm going to keep COP in the sb but the debate with me is over Wing Shards or Crusade. Wing Shards should kill more goblins when they go for the Alpha Strike on turn 4. Tivadars would need to be casted on your turn for safety, and would prolly kill alot, but not as many as Shards would. Later game however, Tivadars would be so much better than Shards. With COP in play and on the topdeck, Tivadars would double your chances of getting a sweeper, and basically ensure the victory. What does everyone think?
Shards or Tivadar's?

I too have looked at Reverance, and also noticed that it is a lock with Humility to any creature based strategy (Go Go Jander!). With Decree of Justice this lock becomes alot better, as well as Crucible/Mishras factory with it. Could this lock also possibly be incorporated into the deck?

Braves54321

08-23-2005, 10:31 PM

I have played Reverence (while playing landstill) versus goblins before (specifically at Big Arse 2). At that point there are 3 cards you have to counter.

If you get Reverence in play you do not need Humility. It is the best anti-Goblins card, much better than Tividar's Crusade.

scarface

08-23-2005, 10:32 PM

I believe I have found our holy grail. Reverance. This enchantment slows goblins down by 5 or more turns, enough time to wrath, get counters online, and begin beats with eternal dragon or angel tokens. These are the key points of the modification I propose:
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

The maindeck Reverance/Crucible offers more flexibility game one, assisting against both control and Goblins/Small-Creature Aggro. The sideboard strenghens your hate against goblins, allowing you do morph into a deck that locks them out, depending on their build. The Crucibles remain to keep control as a favorable matchup. Pulse of the Fields and Reverance can turn around the game against many aggressive decks, and an effective 6 copies of Pithing Needle plus Brainstorms makes Survival and Belcher cry. Chill are CoP are primarily for Goblins, but they obviously neutralize burn and can help (as 1-ofs, depending on the circumstances) against RGSA. I think that this can help turn around Landstill's poor matchup against Goblins. By the way, did I mention that Reverance owns Goblins?

One of the major reasons for running enlightened tutor should be to let you run fewer copies of conditional cards, like reverance, both in the MB and in the SB. Yet, you're suggesting 5 red hate cards in the sideboard in addition to two reverance and two pulses. If you're really that desperate to own goblins, then you might as well devote the rest of your sideboard while your at it. The real dilemma is having enough anti-goblin cards in the sb to win the match, while still saving room for cards that deal with other matchups (crucible and pithing needle aren't gonna solve all other problems). I suggest at least choosing bewteen cop or chill, and reducing the number of copies to 2 (3 max).

mulder

08-24-2005, 12:43 PM

That's waaaaay too much red hate. I realize that red poses problems, but seriously, dedicating that much hate to these matchups seems a bit overboard. If the real problem is Goblins' recovery from mass removal via Ringleader, why is Stifle not being discussed as an SB option? It was always a strong choice against FCG, and there's no reason it shouldn't be here as well. It turns Matron into ino a 3cc Mons' Goblin Raider, it prevent Lackey trigger, temporarily deals with Vial while you dig for a way to remove it permanently, and prevents Ringleader card advantage. On top of all that, it has merit against a great deal of the rest of the field.
Stifle is just not good enough. It's not a permanent solution, since it can only stall one turn (Vial, Lackey) and then is card disadvantage. When stifling a Ringleader or Matron you also generate card disadvantage for yourself. I almost never used it during the whole tournament an I'll probably move it to the SB next time.
I still say: 4 Beb and 4 Hydroblast should solve the problem, since you can simply out-counter them so you can use your Standstills to generate cardadvantage.

scrumdogg

08-24-2005, 01:16 PM

Reverance seems like a neat idea, however, it another WW 4cc spell versus a deck that is increasingly running both Ports AND Wastelands. How reliably can the deck pull off a trick like this in the face of that sort of disruption? Ironically, Stifle (on their Wasteland) strengthens the possibility of Reverance (or WoG) coming into play....

MattH

08-24-2005, 02:02 PM

And we come back to Sphere of Law, which does 90% of what Reverance does against goblins, but only takes a single white mana, and is much more effective than Reverance in the other bad matchup - Burn.

The only thing to watch for is Goblin King but if you have a Sphere down you should have StPs you've been holding back, to use on King and Piledriver.

dsg123456789

08-24-2005, 02:20 PM

Reverance is an amazing card, just cast it in a few games of testing and you will see what I mean. Pithing Needle could get moved to a 3-4-of, because it, as one card, can neutralize half of Goblin's LD, as well as stopping their early vials and preventing their SGC/Fanatics from burning you out post-reverance. For reliability, I would sideboard 3 needles, 2 Reverance, and 3 Tutors. That should keep the cards you need online when you need them. Chill or CoP:Red will still be needed for the burn matchup, unless you feel safe boarding in 2 more Disenchant/Seal of cleansing with CoP:Red (as a 2-of). That is an alternate plan that use very few SB Slots while barely weakening the matchup. Survival is already a good matchup, but the addion of needles post-board can seal the deal. Crucibles post-board will let you waste-lock opposing control decks, and non-FoW-based-aggro-control should generally pack it in to the 5-7 sweepers, wastelock, and possibly even reverance.

EDIT: In light of MattH's post above mine, the reason reverance is a better hoser than Sphere of Law is a matter of analysis. Most Goblins are 1-2 power. Therefore, Sphere of Law negates most goblins. However, the problem card in this matchup (in my experiance) is Piledriver. The Piledriver is still smashing face, where Reverance stops that face-smashing. In truth, I will have to test both cards, but it seems to me that Reverance isn't just preventing 2 damage--it is preventing 9 damage.

Nightmare

08-24-2005, 05:17 PM

If you feel like the White mana investment of the Reverence is too much, perhaps you could try out Silent Arbiter in its place. I've had some sucess with him in Extended, with his only issue being SGC and Gempalm Pain-in-the-Ass.

Another idea I'm playing around with is Quicksand. With its return in 9th, people are paying attention to it again, and since every goblin dies to it, I'm thinking about it for the SB in the Gobs matchup, as well as other Aggro decks. I'm not sure how the mana base could support it, even from the board, but its removal that works under standstill. Any thoughts?

Slay

08-24-2005, 07:51 PM

Quicksand sounds bad, because you want to hit 4 mana ASAP, and becuse you've sided out Crucible. Against somethign like RGSA, I'd say it is pretty damn good.
-Slay

I have tried a lot of "land" solutions. Glacier Chasm, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale... all without much success. (If Tabernacle can produce mana, it be the best land in Magic... :D ) So I believe the mana base should be left intact with no further change unless something in the new set can be sided in to bust the games wide open.

I have tried a lot of "land" solutions. Glacier Chasm, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale... all without much success. (If Tabernacle can produce mana, it be the best land in Magic... :D ) So I believe the mana base should be left intact with no further change unless something in the new set can be sided in to bust the games wide open.
Maze of Ith is still decent in SB with regards to a random meta. However, if it's sided in, it gets sided in for spells and generally Eternal Dragon in the UW build.

pater

08-25-2005, 12:11 PM

The deck really needs to get to 4 mana quickly for cards like Wrath, Disk, Reverence. If you have Crucible out then you can go crazy with lands, but you should be sure you have mana to play control properly before going go crazy saccing lands.

On the debate between Sphere and Reverence, I think Reverence wins it. Agreeing with DSG, Piledriver is a hyoojah problem that Sphere can't deal with. It does negate out alot of the damage from Goblins, but Reverence just stops them all.

Braves54321

08-25-2005, 01:10 PM

Actually, I forgot about Sphere of Law. I'm going to agree w/Matt.

I would play that over Reverence.

Reason: With reverence out you can still lose to Seige-Gang, and the mana investment is easier.

The only cards you can lose to w/Sphere out vs Goblins:
-Anarchy
-Goblin Piledriver

Plus with the help in the Burn Matchup, I think it is better.

Just counter the piledriver/anarchy, and block piledriver w/a manland for a turn then wrath the next turn.

midnightAce

08-25-2005, 01:27 PM

I agree with Matt and Braves. Sphere, being easier to cast, has a wider application as a SB card. Reverence is a purely dedciated slot to Goblins, and has virtually, no application against any other aggro decks out there.

Also, with the inclusion of Goblin Kings in many goblin decks as 1of or 2of, if Landstill taps out for Reverence, they might still have goblins capable of swinging via King's bonus, same thing holds true for those goblin decks that an active Jitte on the board.

pater

08-25-2005, 02:35 PM

So are we saying that for an anti-red slot in SB we neglect CoPs, Chill, BEBs, ect. for Sphere of Law? If so then I am currently looking at a SB of:

Sphere's good and all, and so is moat, but they all come down turn 4, and thats the turn where goblins has you beat. The sb cards that come down turn 4 will only race them like 50% of the time, and thats being generous considering that they run port and wasteland now. I think that for goblin hate, while Moat is a strong choice, it may be too expensive.

Now Moat AND Tivadars in the sb... and now we're talkin'...

Braves54321

08-25-2005, 07:11 PM

That was exactly what I was thinking, Moat >>> Reverence

I don't agreed with this statement at all. Moat makes it so that you can't swing with decree tokens, while it may not be a huge deal, sitting there building mana w/Reverence out then cycling a huge decree is one way to win. Also, Moat costs $50-$60 and Reverence is $1.

Sphere's good and all, and so is moat, but they all come down turn 4, and thats the turn where goblins has you beat. The sb cards that come down turn 4 will only race them like 50% of the time, and thats being generous considering that they run port and wasteland now. I think that for goblin hate, while Moat is a strong choice, it may be too expensive.

Now Moat AND Tivadars in the sb... and now we're talkin'...

Regardless of what you say, I can say that Goblins doesn't kill on turn 4 alot. Unless they drop double piledriver and go to town, which isn't going to happen if you have plow for even one of them.

Also,
Tividar's crusade is far too much of a limited card to bother sideboarding it. Its good for one match, but that isn't enough.
I would rather sideboard something like Wing Shards which can actually be sideboarded versus other aggro decks, some crusade cannot do.

noobslayer

08-25-2005, 07:18 PM

An easy answer to the turn four problem is wing shards in the board. Buy then they are playing tons of hasty critters, which sets up nicely for an instant speed wrath.

EDIT: I just realized braves beat me to the shards comment.

kirdape3

08-25-2005, 08:42 PM

Against Goblins, just make Angel tokens anyways. You don't want to lose to some random Sharpshooter or anything.

Moat may be expensive, but it's only as expensive for the pair of them as it is for the set of Forces or Tundras in the deck.

frogboy

08-25-2005, 08:43 PM

Is this or is this not a discussion on the optimal form of Landstill? Budget considerations do not belong in this forum.

scrumdogg

08-25-2005, 09:39 PM

Is this or is this not a discussion on the optimal form of Landstill? Budget considerations do not belong in this forum.
Unless there is some secret stash of Moat, budget & availability are both an issue. One of the reasons Solidarity will never be widespread is the difficulty of getting Resets. Moat may be the Great White Hope, but even if it is the optimal solution for this deck I can't see having a $50-60 dollar card helping spread the love.

Moat also suffers from the same problem as Reverance in regards to Burn - it does nothing. Sphere & Shards both seem to be more relevant (and much more affordable). Shards gets rid of their team and Sphere reduces the actual numbers of threats to be dealt with by radically reducing the pressure Goblins can realisitically put on you.

On a side note, from people who were at Gencon, do the unwashed masses seem to be running Vengeance or Disk? What did they do to their decks to alter them from the standard build? Was it working or did they simply get good matchups (and clueless opponents) all day?

dsg123456789

08-25-2005, 11:05 PM

I think I have changed my tune concerning several topics, gravitating back to my position of months past:

Enlightened Tutor is an amazing cards, truly flexible and powerful, but in a deck that completely and utterly relies on card advantage, it is not the optimal choice. I won't be singing its praises for Landstill players anymore (or at least for a few pages).

Next, Reverance/Moat vs. Sphere of Law. In truth, having 2 must-removes (Anarchy/Piledriver) compared to the other 2 must-counters (SGC/Sharpshooter) makes the former an easier load to bear. Also, the usefulness in the burn matchup makes the Sphere really neato.

Next on the list is the 5 sweepers I assumed most people to be maindecking (3 wrath/2 vengeance). Is this still the case? Have you moved into adding additional counters in the slots previously devoted to sweepers? I think that being able to bring in additional counters could be very useful in several matchups, which is why my new Random Tech ™ is Merchant Scroll. It can act as additional counters when you need them, and it can allow you to run 1 or 2 copies of certain cards in your sideboard (Echoing Truth, Hibernation, Stifle, BEB) if you should choose (For instance, to improve the solidarity matchup without devoting 4 slots to it). I will be testing all of this tonight.

Nightmare

08-25-2005, 11:27 PM

Merchant scroll is a Sorcery, and how is it better than Cunning Wish? I'm running 6 sweepers main, 4 Wrath and 2 Vengeance. So far in testing, it seems to be pretty solid. And regardless of people's opinion on the card, I'm running 3 crusades in the SB, because of the number of times i've cycled decree for a ton on their turn, and then Crusaded on mine, allowing ME to Alpha Strike for the win. Its also a turn faster than Wrath (ie: the turn you need it) and its not that big of a deal to devote 3 spots to a single matchup, when the other Gob tech in my board works for burn as well.

CopperLeaf

08-26-2005, 12:30 AM

Moat costs $50-$60 and Reverence is $1
Get a job.

Seriously though, moat is one of the best hosers there is. It stops a lot of random stuff as well, which is great in the earlier rounds of tourneys where you get paired with god knows what.

pater

08-26-2005, 10:35 AM

At least he's learning to at least use the shift key, if incorrectly.

Against Goblins, Reverence is just as good as Moat. Nevertheless I would much rather just have Sphere of Law as my answer. All you have to do is Plow Piledrivers and do Nightmare's alpha strike tactic (minus Crusade, plus Wrath) and beat face.

troopatroop

08-26-2005, 10:40 AM

Moat is much better than Sphere of Law.

Moat beats randomness like secret force all day long, something reverance can't do. Sphere of Law, While it may come in against burn, It's hitting turn 4, where they're planning to hit you for the win, or maybe have already. At that point they will widdle away at your life for 1's and 2's for the win. Unless you play pulse in conjunction with Sphere, you're not gonna survive. Chill is for burn. Moat is for goblins. Sphere, while being more versitile, isn't optimal burn hate, and is worse than the best goblin hate. I'm going with Moat.

dsg123456789

08-26-2005, 01:42 PM

I think it was assumed that everyone should run 2-3 pulse in the sideboard, to beat decks that win by dealing damage (Aggro/Aggro-Control).

Braves54321

08-26-2005, 01:51 PM

Moat costs $50-$60 and Reverence is $1
Get a job.
I have lots of money thank you. Budget is not a concern for me personally, but it is for many. I would buy a playset of Moats in a second if it was actually worth playing.

Seriously though, moat is one of the best hosers there is. It stops a lot of random stuff as well, which is great in the earlier rounds of tourneys where you get paired with god knows what.

You should smash those decks anyways.

Either way, neither Reverence nor Moat are worthy of SB slots in my opinion. You need something versus Burn, and sphere does that (as well as hitting goblins). Sideboarding for crap like secret force is not a good plan when you have Solidarity running around, a deck that is a much rougher matchup than crappy aggro.

Nightmare

08-26-2005, 04:11 PM

Speaking of which - What's the current plan Vs Solidarity? Gaea's Blessing is sweet, but a dead draw. I still think its worth putting in, because it doesn't require you to draw your hate card in order to use it. Rule of Law? Meddling Mage? What are you guys using?

dsg123456789

08-26-2005, 04:18 PM

This is my plan against solidarity: Resets are difficult to find, and so I assume that solidarity is not a significant enough meta-concern to be hated out by red deck's siroccos and pillars. If I actually had to play against it, I would use my 4 floating sideboard slots for meddling mages or mana leaks. Mage is probably the strongest choice, if you can get one down for Brainfreeze and a second for Cunning wish in quick succession, or if you can prevent a wish from ever resolving. That would assure you the win, however, it would be very difficult to manage that. If solidarity is more of a meta concern than goblins, I would cut 1-2 Sphere of Law for Rule of Law/Arcane Lab, in addition to Meddling Mage. The last point I wish to make is this: going 7-1 is often fine: Solidarity is an extremely underplayed deck, and so if you take one loss to it, while beating random scrubbage and Goblins/Burn, you should still make top8, and be able to place highly/at the top from there. Winning is what we are all about, and I think that the big picture has to be taken into account: Lose to Solidarity, let Red.dec ruin the Solidarity player, Landstill beats everyone else and wins the tournement.

pater

08-26-2005, 05:56 PM

You don't need Moats to deal with Secret Force. The deck runs Plow, Wrath, and Disk/Vengeance main already. The slot I was debating about was the anti-red slot in SB, in which I would use Sphere of Law since you can use it in match-ups against both Goblins and Burn. Chill isn't as good against Goblins and Moat is useless against Burn. SoL runs against both decks.

@troop: SoL + Pulse tends to answer alot of late game Goblin/Burn troubles. Plus, in the Goblin match you'll also have the sweepers to help ya, and in the Burn matchup counters can slow them down so they won't cream ya by 4th turn.

midnightAce

08-26-2005, 06:07 PM

Moat or Rev aside, there is one question that hasn't been yet touched on indepthly... what exactly are we going to side out if we are loading up all these Spheres and Wing Shards and Moats?

Most decks only run up to two Crucibles, that alone is not enough to side out, FoF are heavy hitter draw spells that we potentially need, to dig for kill condition/additional Sphere/Shard and such. Disk/Wrath/Vengeance should all be left alone, so what exactly do we side board out? Decrees/EDs if the deck runs them?

dsg123456789

08-26-2005, 08:33 PM

For U/W builds, Vengeance, FoF, and possibly a single Standstill or Counterspell come out. Also, depending on the opponenent and your confidence, disenchant and E. Dragon can also come out. Vengeance is an all around good card, but its too slow post-sb. It is a utility spell, not a sweeper that comes online fast enough. Also, you don't want to blow up your own Spheres. Crucible is also a 1-of or 2-of post-SB against goblins, because midgame and lategame Factory recursion is very powerful. If you run the build in post 1, this is the sideboarding plan I would usually execute:

This is against an opponent who I do not think is running Jittes. If I suspect they are running Jitte, I would go +1 Disenchant, -1 Standstill. In all reality, you are not going to be casting FoF until you have stabilized and have definite control (where you have 4 free mana at an EOT [this being turn 16]), at which point FoF is not digging for a answer you desperately need. Standstill is great if they played Fanatic turn 1, but not so hot if they followed it up with a Jitte under your standstill. The virtual LD the jitte will provide, killing manlands, coupled with the fact that they will break standstill the next turn, leaves you in a poor position. Thats why I side out standstill.

pater

08-27-2005, 01:34 PM

I currently main 2 Disenchants and 2 Pulse. Judging the matchup, those could be taking out without regard. I would say siding out FoF isn't a bad choice since having early-game control > late-game draw. FoF oftentimes is just a last nail in the coffin. And if you need more room, you can take out a Counterspell and a Standstill. I would say you can part with a Brainstorm but stopping the first turn Lackey is important, and BS can help nab that Plow or FoW.

And I really hope that no one mentions anything about Pulse being good against Goblins. 4 life doesn't help when a Piledriver pounds your dome for 16.

dsg123456789

08-27-2005, 10:00 PM

Pater, pulse has sealed the deal far more often than FoF ever has for me. After you gain control, and while you are focusing on not losing, Pulse gives you 8-12 more life to work with, and heals you all the way once you have stabilized. Pulse is one of the best cards, because it slows goblins down, giving you the time you need to cast a wrath or Sphere of Law, and do dig for your answers to Piledrivers. Pulse is (I thought) the one card that every Landstill knows to be amazing against decks that try to deal lethal damage before turn 30 (i.e. not control matchups).

Slay

08-27-2005, 11:05 PM

Pulse is old tech. That was back when Vial Goblins wasn't tweaked out to cut Landstill off from double white for multiple turns. Stuff that hangs around is much more useful, especially if it only costs a single white. Pulse is also fairly vulnerable to manaburning.
-Slay

Danger

08-28-2005, 12:30 PM

I can't imagine Pulse completely keeping up with new vial goblins with a casting cost of three (and two white). I mean, I dropped a COP:red like, second turn, and he had no way of dealing with it (i.e. no SB pithing needles) but he still over ran me in the long run. And even my board sweepers (I had seven MD) were not enough with Bidding. I don't know what the perfect answer is against goblins, but its not Pulse or COP:Red. I don't think Chill could do anything either, not with Goblin Lackeys and Vials.

dsg123456789

08-28-2005, 02:43 PM

I'm not suggesting that pulse alone wins the game! What I intended to communicate was that pulse can stall for a few turns while you dig for a permanent answer, and then it can begin to recover some more health. Pulse in combination with an enchantment hoser can slow goblins down enough to drop a flying threat and win. This is how I have been going 60/40 with goblins preboard, and better post-board (against the 4 waste, 4 port, maindeck kiki/sgc/pyromancer/sharpshooter build).

amightyhippy

08-30-2005, 09:39 AM

With reference to the landstill matchup - Geas blessing isn't going to help much, they just continue to combo with the trigger on the stack , then wish for stroke and beat you. Arcane Lab, Mana Maze or Rule of Law are MUCH worse!

With goblins, would running something like propaganda be worthwhile? It's blue meaning it's harder for ports to shut you off the mana, and can be paired with either blasts from the board or sphere of law which are both useful against burn.

I make no pretentions to have any great expertise with the deck.

scarface

08-30-2005, 06:20 PM

With goblins, would running something like propaganda be worthwhile? It's blue meaning it's harder for ports to shut you off the mana, and can be paired with either blasts from the board or sphere of law which are both useful against burn.

Propaganda would be much more effective in the goblin matchup than chill, but the problem is it has absolutely no use aganist burn or sligh. What else would you board it against? Other than random aggro matches that you should win anyway, the card will mostly just clogg up your sideboard. Plus, propaganda dies to REB, and ghostly prison cant be pitched to force in emergencies. I like sphere of law the best, as it cant be REB'd or pithing needle'd, and it completely shuts down burn decks while slowing down goblins enough for you to take control.

Aside from that, I have a another question about sideboarding strategies. What should I board out if I find myself with a ridiculous amount of cards I want to board in? For example, against ATS I bring in 3 pithing needles, 2 humility, and 3 furnaces. I'm running the u/w build shown at the beginning of the thread, only with crucibles in place of dragons, so what do I sacrifice? Right now I'm leaning towards 3 vengeances, 2 facts, and some combination of 3 other cards.

dsg123456789

08-30-2005, 07:05 PM

I would side out Crucibles first of all against ATS. They only run 18 lands, and only get 2-3 in play in the first 5-6 turns usually. Wastelock doesn't ruin them, so you can safely remove Crucible. Furnace does not seem like it would be as effective against ATS, since it is such a slow answer. Something like Tormod's Crypt could destroy their graveyard or force them to only use Squee, Anger, or Genesis until they deal with crypt, which would cripple them. FoF also seems quite strong in this matchup, allowing you to overwhelm them with answers to their threats. Lastly, I would consider boarding out 2 wraths instead of 2 vengeances, because vengeance also hits Tsabo's Web, randomartifactorenchantmentbyE.Tutor, and Survival. Having a late game Gamebreaker seems like it could be very strong.

Next point:
What do people think about the UWr build? Is it worth maindeck Fire/Ice in place of Vengeance and 1 wrath, and sideboard REB, Sirrocco, Pyroclasm, or other hosers? How about the fact that you pretty much have to drop to 1 basic land to support it?

bigredmeanie

08-30-2005, 07:51 PM

A version that splashed red seems like it would have a better matchup against goblins AND te mirror, which noone seems to ever mention.

Splashing Red gets you Pyroclasm for goblins, Sirocco for Solidarity, and REB for the mirror. Plus Fire/Ice puts the Survival matchup in your favor tremendously.

I've actually been a 1.5/Legacy fan and player for a long time, and I'm doing some research on decklists with the change in format. I've played a 3-color version (U/W/r) of Landstill for a long time (designed & successful at beating a wide-open meta where you have NO idea what is going to show up), but someone in one of the forums talks about how great his 4-color Landstill deck is and how it's dominating the CA Legacy scene. I'm definitely curious about it; can someone post a sample decklist?

As far as splashing for red is concerned, I am a big fan. As someone pointed out, you get access to a number of cards that can improve key matchups (REB/Pyroblast, Sirocco, Fire/Ice) but I have tried Pyroclasm before for the goblins matchup and I didn't like it as much as I thought it would. The sorcery speed hurts, because i wound up holding a clasm to a pretty harmless board only to have an EOT Warchief via Aether Vial and getting crushed on the next attack phase. It wound up being ok in the random metagame that exists because it also splashes damage to WW and Troll Ascetic, to name a couple. With the addition of Wraths, E. Dragons, and Decrees to most decklists there doesn't seem to be room to add cards like Fire/Ice maindeck (having too many red cards in the board seems like a bad idea) without cutting some degree of 'staple' cards.

-AA

ChrisTJs27

09-01-2005, 02:18 PM

[color=#000000:post_uid9]How come no one is discussion Landstill's performance from the Legacy Championship? Why is it no one is analyzing the build Zvi played and the buid he recommends?

Why in fact, do I see little discussion of the Legacy Championship anywhere? :([/color:post_uid9]

dsg123456789

09-01-2005, 05:34 PM

Zvi agreed with the generally accepted list, Landstill did good, and it just confirms what we have been saying. You don't see discussion because for the most part good players used terrible lists, and so the metagame itself was not the one we are bringing to GP: Philly. Many builds here are superior to the ones played at the Championship (puke @ solidarity's Championship listing).

scarface

09-01-2005, 07:09 PM

Actually, Zvi ran dustbowl, cutting his FoF's to 1 and his brainstorms to 3. He also ran 2 dragon, 2 decree, and 2 crucible, all in the MB (I generally see only 4 slots reserved for some combination of these cards). I agree that people were were running terrible lists; even the goblin deck that won ran lightning bolt and dust bowl.

Zilla

09-01-2005, 07:55 PM

If you read Zvi's article on mtg.com, he explained why he was only running 3 Brainstorm, for example. He'd forgotten to add FoWs to the deck until 3 minutes before the tournament, and he frantically cut things at the last minute. He posted both the list he played and the list he would have played if he'd had more time to prepare. The "would have played" list is probably the better one to reference for discussion.

kimberley

09-01-2005, 10:53 PM

A version that splashed red seems like it would have a better matchup against goblins AND te mirror, which noone seems to ever mention.

Splashing Red gets you Pyroclasm for goblins, Sirocco for Solidarity, and REB for the mirror. Plus Fire/Ice puts the Survival matchup in your favor tremendously.
1. You are right about ATS, Goblins and Solidarity, but wrong about the mirror. UW has clear advantage their.
There is not much room for REB in your SB and it would not help much anyway.
StoP is better in the mirror than Bolt or Fire (unless you draw and resolve a lot of them by pure chance). Ur has answers to Decree and Dragon...but alltogether it is to much.
Ur Landstill cannot handle a UW mirror without having a SB that is very subpar in other aspects.
The matchup isn't horribly bad, but...well...negative.

3.I very much liked Zvi's list, for running the lowest amount of Lands and FoFs.
I was very upset about Robilland's UR list, which did not show any understanding in the decks purpose imho.

Destavi

09-01-2005, 11:47 PM

Zvi is 100% correct in stating that FoF is BAD. It's too slow and is only played out of desperation or when you've already stabilized. I've cut FoF completely. Also, did anyone notice his junk sideboard?

frogboy

09-02-2005, 02:17 AM

Force of Will is bad in Landstill. Discuss.

Edited in reasoning:

Your Force is terrible because your blue count is incredibly low. (16-18 cards) Given that you usually don't want to pitch Standstill to counter a threat because you can just kill it and then drop Standstill, plus seeing as how pitching Fact to it is rarely right past turn three, you don't really have many good options here. I'd side it out against green aggro. Maybe white, too. Depends on how much I was afraid of Geddon. I guess it'd be good in the mirror, but like any other control deck is going to shred you by virtue of having a better draw engine.

Cut Force from Landstill and move it to the board for combo and mirror matchups, and replace it maindeck with Absorb. There's like, three spells that matter that come down before you can get up CSpell (Lackey, Vial, SotF) and those are sort of irrelevant if you have Plow/Wrath/Disenchant/Vengeance. Well okay SOTF is bad if you don't have Disenchant and they bin Genesis but RGSA has been pushed out of the meta more and more. Absorb is better once you've stabilized because you'd be hardcasting Force anyways and this is cheaper + has that neat little gain life thing.

For your Solidarity matchup, it'd be a straight up switch for Absorb or some other hard counter, so mostly you wouldn't be tapping out early, which doesn't happen much anyway. Basically you can't beat with Factory for an extra turn. That might actually be critical, but it might not. Besides, you're toast game one anyway. And I might put the FoWs in the board, so I'd go up to 12 hard counters against combo postboard. I'm mostly not sure if Force would be good in the Landstill mirror relative to a nonpitch counter that didn't cost a million mana to hardcast.

Points some have made and I'm sure others will:

Turn one Lackey. Can you really have enough answers to that annoying jerk?

You have like six maindeck Wrath effects PLUS Swords PLUS your sideboard hate of choice. It's not Lackey you're usually losing to, it's the fact that you run out of Wrath effects before they run out of beaters. Look, if you kept a hand that didn't have Plow or Wrath, you're probably retarded or went to five and thus were going to lose anyway.

Turn one Aether Vial.

Eh, this is the biggest factor. My Landstill list has 3 Disenchant and two or three Vengeances, but this is probably the biggest issue.

Turn two Survival when you're playing 2nd.

Turn two Survival with FoW backup when playing 1st

Do people even still play these? Somewhat addressed by the Disenchant issue, you can also just Wrath their board a couple times and then murder them with Eternal Dragon/Decree while they rebuild with Genesis.

When Solidarity goes off and you only have two Islands in play.

That doesn't happen very often. I also said I'd keep the Forces in the board for this matchup. I might not even do that, because of Lab and Mage, but I dunno.

Turn four when you Wrath the Gro player and he Dazes.

Hold off on the Wrath? They're usually not threatening lethal damage at that point.

Okay, as I said, the downside of FoW is a lack of blue cards, especially ones that you want to pitch. It's almost never right to Force pitching Standstill unless you're going to die RIGHT NOW because that Standstill was probably going to find you an answer to whatever you Forced. I also said that most of your permission is best utilized once you've stabilized, and Absorb is really good at staying ahead at that point. It's also cheap enough to be not bad. You could stick FoWs in the board so you could board up to twelve hard counters against combo or control mirrors. Note also that when you'd want FoW you'd usually be bringing in blue cards as well. Cool how that works.

Edited By frogboy on 1125638797

Nightmare

09-02-2005, 09:29 AM

Force of Will is bad in Landstill. Discuss.
You're kidding me, right? You've got to be. Otherwise, I want to quit Magic. There are three counters that make up the top 3 best counterspells in the game. FIRST IS FORCE OF WILL, second is Mana Drain (we can't play it), and third is Counterspell. Notice the massive lack of Absorb on that list. FoW is FREE. Turn 1 Lackey/Vial aside, Fow allows you to reasonably utilize all of your resources EVERY turn. That means hey, you can tap out, because you can still counter things. You can reasonably Wrath turn 4, because whatever they do to try and recover can be stopped. And to top it off, you're asking us to SB Force?? Seriously the worst idea I've seen on this thread, and people suggested a black splash. I sincerely hope I play you in some match somewhere while you play Absorb and I play FoW. Especially if you take them out of the board. This is a terrible idea.

dsg123456789

09-02-2005, 10:15 AM

You do know that goblins is now running around 7-8 land disruption cards (Waste, Port) and getting WW on turn 4 is not something to count on? Also, seeing Vengeance as an answer to vial...huh? Vengeance comes out turn 6, a full turn after you have died. Vengeance is not an answer to turn 1 vial, just as wrath is not an answer to turn 1 lackey. In both cases, the damage has already been done.

Obfuscate Freely

09-02-2005, 10:28 AM

Frogboy, you probably think Standstill is such a horrible draw engine (it's the best in the format, btw) because you undervalue Force's interactions with it. FoW has so much synergy with Standstill itself; Force, Factory, and STP are what makes the damn card work.

An opening hand with Standstill and FoW backup is about the best hand you can draw with this deck, and it will probably win the game against almost anything in the format. The ability to FoW the first threat, then drop 'still, or drop 'still with FoW in hand, is insane.

If you aren't seeing that often enough, adding more blue cards might be a good idea, but cutting Force is not the way to go. Landstill likes to tap out so much, even in the midgame, that FoW remains important for the entire time you are trying to gain control. Only once you've stabalized (and won) would a trashy 3cc counter like Absorb be better.

I also want to point out that even though you may have other answers to the format's gamebreaking early plays, having a 4-of so versatile that it deals with them all, without even tying up mana, is highly desirable. If you look at the number of early answers you have without Force, early Lackeys, Vials, and Survivals become very frightening.

I appreciate that you're making us think "outside the box," but you're wrong.

pater

09-02-2005, 10:37 AM

Force of Will is good, and is a must-have in this deck. Saying anything otherwise is ridiculous.

Putting FoW sideboard is even more ridiculous. What do you side it in against, besides everything?

Even late-game the card is good because it can be hard-casted with the hyoojah manabase.

Conclusion: In a blue deck (which this is) that plays control (which this does) that hits late-game (which this does) FoW is awesome.

frogboy

09-02-2005, 11:00 AM

So did anyone actually go and read the rest of what I said? Because it doesn't look like it.

Re: Port: Yeah, it's insane, but if it's cutting off WW all that means is your opponent didn't draw a fetchland. It can delay the Wrath a turn, yeah, but it's rare that turn one Vial leads to the turn five kill because Vial lends itself to a slower game plan. It's really Lackey that makes you fear the quick kill, and you still have Plow/Factory/countermagic.

Landstill taps out only to reset the baard. The only time that's really going to hurt you is if your opponent untaps and plays either Armageddon or Goblin Ringleader. Geddon basically kolds you. That does mean you need to hold off on your Wrath until you have permission up (Although depending on the number of cards your opponent has in hand, you can just Wrath, not play a land, then go back to square one if they decide to Geddon instead of playing a creature.) against WW decks. Fortunately, their clock is such that this is possible.

Ringleader averages 2-3 Goblins drawn. You can use Factory and Plow to make your opponent drop another creature then reset the board over and over again to eventually trade your opponent right out of cards. Absorb is better in this scenario because it negates reach and buys more time for the next threat. FoW is ONLY better IF you have the blue card AND you have them both when the Ringleader is played.

Using Force of Will in conjunction with Standstill is like Probe without the kicker. Standstill is only really good when you're not discarding from it. Granted Force is better at depleting your hand size, you really want to continue trading one for one and making land drops then playing Standstill when you're lower on cards.

Okay now can someone actually address the points I'm making rather then going "omg fow is the best card in existence noob." I'm not denying Force of Will is a good card in a vacuum. I'm saying that you don't need the permission on turn one often enough to make the loss of a card worth it, nor do you have the card to pitch often enough.

DJ Catchem

09-02-2005, 11:23 AM

Pull Force out of Landstill and watch the number of Belcher T8s go through the roof. I like it!

I guess this is one way to make combo viable in Legacy.

...waitaminute. You're not kidding, are you?

--->DJ

Nightmare

09-02-2005, 12:08 PM

Ok, I read the reast of the post (I did before too, but now I will address it all), and I still hold that you make a weak argument for dropping the best permission spell in the game.

Assuming the Goblins matchup (since its the one worth assuming) if you think trading 1 for 1 will help you run them out, you're dead wrong. If you assume that you can successfully give them untill turn 5 at best to reset, without adequite disruption that doesn't tap you out, you're wrong. If you think that the three life from absorb saves you a significant amount of time, you're wrong.

Absorb costs WUU. Think about that for a minute. You're assuming some big things with this, and you should consider them well. If you try to utilize your Factories to shut down Lackey, you have at best, 1+(U/W) on turn 2. That means turn 3 you (at best) have 1UU/1WU/1WW. Can you counter a spell? Yes. Does it leave you wide open to do so? Yes. Can you reasonably assume that the goblins player has pulled a Waste or Port out and is shutting down your resources? Absolutely. Let's assume its a Wasteland, since I believe their ratio is 4/2 as of now. They would waste Tundra, to keep you off of double white and double blue. In this situation, you now have to wait until TURN 5 at the EARLIEST before you can reliably counter 1 spell. And in doing so, you have most likely shut yourself out of the game, or let Lackey through 2-3 times, or Vial has come online, or already lost.

My point: Turn 1 is not the reason you use Force of Will. The reason you use FoW is because it is golden on turns 0-5, when you need to use every mana you can, and on turns 6-end when you can reliably cast it for its alternate casting cost of 3UU.

I have played this matchup to death. I have run 7-10 cards in my board for this matchup and still had them win. I have found three things that are EXTREMELY important.
1) You WILL run out of sweepers before they run out of creatures. I have sided in an additional 3 T-Crusades and still had this happen.
2) Standstill is not the savage Tech in this matchup, because you will very rarely have enough board advantage for them to need to break it.
3) FoW is IMPERATIVE in slowing them down enough for you to draw into your answers.

I know I haven't addressed the other matchups you addressed, but here's my quick rundown:

@ Survival: You win anyway. However, allowing them to sucessfully cast Survival is a pretty big mistake. When they are playing first, even on turn 2 its too early for you to deal with it. I would much rather have 6-7 maindeck answers to it than 2-3 (disenchant).

@ Solidarity w/ 2 islands in play: Not as rare as you think. However, you've mentioned bringing them in for this matchup, so I'll leave it alone.

@ Gro: One of the problems with this matchup is that they run more free counters than you do. Why would you want to make that a 7 to 0 ratio?

I actually agree on the last three points, but those aren't arguments against FoW, rather, just metagaming better. All in all, I can't think of a single card i would rather have than FoW, and I can't think of a single scenario where I would give it up for any other counter. (The obvious exception is when you lack another blue card, but in that case, you misplayed anyway.)

Zilla

09-02-2005, 03:34 PM

Pull Force out of Landstill and watch the number of Belcher T8s go through the roof. I like it!
If it didn't lose to itself half the time, that might be true. Using Belcher as an argument against FoW is assinine until Belcher itself stops sucking. We may as well stick to the relevant metagame concerns.

Mad Zur

09-02-2005, 04:02 PM

Force of Will is bad in Landstill. Discuss.

Edited in reasoning:

Your Force is terrible because your blue count is incredibly low. (16-18 cards)
This fact makes FoW less impressive than it could be, but it does not make it worth cutting on its own (lots of decks run FoW successfully with low blue card counts, see: ATS). So moving on:

Given that you usually don't want to pitch Standstill to counter a threat because you can just kill it and then drop Standstill,
If you can "just kill it", you should just kill it. Absorb or FoW would be equally useless here.

...plus seeing as how pitching Fact to it is rarely right past turn three, you don't really have many good options here.
If pitching Fact isn't right then it probably isn't the spell you need to counter either way. You need to save your counters, FoWs or Absorbs, for the real threats that are hard to deal with in other ways.

I'd side it out against green aggro. Maybe white, too. Depends on how much I was afraid of Geddon.
Since when was this deck not afraid of Geddon? And wtf is green aggro?

I guess it'd be good in the mirror, but like any other control deck is going to shred you by virtue of having a better draw engine.
No other control deck has a draw engine that even comes close to being better than Standstill. What else is there that can beat three cards for two mana?

Cut Force from Landstill and move it to the board for combo and mirror matchups, and replace it maindeck with Absorb. There's like, three spells that matter that come down before you can get up CSpell (Lackey, Vial, SotF)
Let's grant that for a moment. Counterspell is a four-of. You can't just assume a single four-of is going to handle all the spells you need to counter on turn two. The reasons for this should be pretty obvious, involving statistics, and the fact that there tend to be more than four, sometimes a lot more, cards in the other guys deck you want to counter.

...and those are sort of irrelevant if you have Plow/Wrath/Disenchant/Vengeance.
Uh huh... Lackey is killed by StP. Vial is killed by Disenchant (if at a horrible cost to your tempo). Survival is sometimes answered by Disenchant. Not, of course, if they have the mana to get Genesis in the yard. You'll lose if that happens. Oh, let's not fail to mention that, at least in the case of ATS, you have to worry about their own FoW. Absorb isn't going to make that turn two Disenchant resolve.

Wrath and Vengeance, it so happens, are completely irrelevant to all of these cards. They are much too slow. Any half-decent Goblin deck will have generated such a huge amount of advantage with Lackey by turn four or vial by turn six that either you'll be dead or they'll have a full hand. Also remember that the turn you tap out for the sweeper, you can't counter. This is ignoring their mana denial. Vengeance against Survival? Neat, you may still have enough lands to cycle it by turn six. Not for much longer.

Well okay SOTF is bad if you don't have Disenchant and they bin Genesis but RGSA has been pushed out of the meta more and more. Absorb is better once you've stabilized because you'd be hardcasting Force anyways and this is cheaper + has that neat little gain life thing.
I'm not sure if you're talking about a specific matchup here or not. If you are talking about RGSA, FoW is still so much better it's ridiculous, because you need to counter a turn two Survival and three points of life hardly makes up the difference. If you're talking about the cards in general, you are correct that Absorb is usually much easier to hardcast. That's not the same as "better once you've stabilized", because, for example, waiting for seven mana to refill with a FoF isn't so hot.

For your Solidarity matchup, it'd be a straight up switch for Absorb or some other hard counter, so mostly you wouldn't be tapping out early, which doesn't happen much anyway.
Tapping lands and swinging is Landstill's plan against Solidarity. You have to force them to go off before they abuse their velocity plus fact that they have a lot more must-counters than you have counters.

Basically you can't beat with Factory for an extra turn.
An extra turn? the card is three extra mana you need to leave open. For each one. It keeps you from attacking at all for a while.

Besides, you're toast game one anyway. And I might put the FoWs in the board, so I'd go up to 12 hard counters against combo postboard.
That's not so hot, because if you want to raise the matchup to actually good post-board, you'll need another 4-8 slots, leaving about 5 for the mirror and the color red.

I'm mostly not sure if Force would be good in the Landstill mirror relative to a nonpitch counter that didn't cost a million mana to hardcast.
I don't actually know, but WUU is dangerously close to a million, against a deck with Wastelands and in a deck with eight colorless sources.

Points some have made and I'm sure others will:
[about Lackey]
You have like six maindeck Wrath effects PLUS Swords PLUS your sideboard hate of choice. It's not Lackey you're usually losing to, it's the fact that you run out of Wrath effects before they run out of beaters. Look, if you kept a hand that didn't have Plow or Wrath, you're probably retarded or went to five and thus were going to lose anyway.
Do you know why you run out of Wraths before they run out of creatures? There are two reasons:
A) Their draw engine is not only functional but it's now uncounterable.
B) Your draw engine, instead of being the best in the format, is total shit because they dominate the board until turn four, at which point you tap out ensure that whatever threats they've drawn into with their massive card advantage are resolving next turn.

All because you had Absorb instead of FoW for the turn one Lackey. Oh, and sometimes, instead of any of this, you just die.

[about Aether Vial.]
Eh, this is the biggest factor. My Landstill list has 3 Disenchant and two or three Vengeances, but this is probably the biggest issue.
Vengeance is about as bad at answering Vial as Wrath is at answering Lackey, but you seem to be conceding this point anyway.

[about Survival]
Do people even still play these? Somewhat addressed by the Disenchant issue, you can also just Wrath their board a couple times and then murder them with Eternal Dragon/Decree while they rebuild with Genesis.
Where have you been for the past year? Resolved Survival most certainly does not lose to a Wrath. Dragon costs more than FoW (2 million or something); ATS will Tradewind or Drake it, and any other Survival deck will kill you long before then. As for Decree, it just so happens that every Survival deck I know of plays Goblin Sharpshooter. They'll have Squee to fetch it, Genesis, so you can't effectively counter it, and Anger, so your tokens die the same turn they play him. So with the win conditions out of the way it's just a matter of repeated card advantage that not even Wrath or, at this point, Disenchant will stop. Even if they don't stop the win conditions, Genesis will destroy you long before they're an issue. Survival must be countered, or at the very least Disenchanted before they untap.

[about Solidarity when you have two lands]

That doesn't happen very often. I also said I'd keep the Forces in the board for this matchup. I might not even do that, because of Lab and Mage, but I dunno.
It doesn't have to be two lands; a Plains, Factory, Conclave, Tundra setup, for example, will only let you play one counter even after a High Tide.

[about Gro, specifically Daze]
Hold off on the Wrath? They're usually not threatening lethal damage at that point.
True enough; the more relevent question is, what about turns six through eight where you want to play a FoF but can only back it up with one counter?

[about tapping out for Disk and protecting it]
Or stop playing Disk.
Sure.

[about other combo]
See Solidarity. Or win round one.
So you admit these matchups suffer as well, moving on...

[about PoP]
Play more basics.
Do you have a proposed manabase? Keep in mind, you need WUU on turn three.

And Circle Red or some damn thing.
Much harder with four board slots taken up by a card you should run maindeck.

Okay, as I said, the downside of FoW is a lack of blue cards, especially ones that you want to pitch. It's almost never right to Force pitching Standstill unless you're going to die RIGHT NOW because that Standstill was probably going to find you an answer to whatever you Forced.
Exactly, you have to know what will kill you and what won't. Without FoW, you would lose in all of the latter situations.

I also said that most of your permission is best utilized once you've stabilized, and Absorb is really good at staying ahead at that point.
It's more important - i.e. you'll die if you don't have it - when you're being pressured, either before you have WUU or when you need to tap to less than that.

It's also cheap enough to be not bad.
I disagree; it puts a lot more strain on the manabase, which is a very bad thing.

You could stick FoWs in the board so you could board up to twelve hard counters against combo or control mirrors. Note also that when you'd want FoW you'd usually be bringing in blue cards as well. Cool how that works.
This would be a simple matter of causing a problem and fixing it later on, but damage has already been done.

Re: Port: Yeah, it's insane, but if it's cutting off WW all that means is your opponent didn't draw a fetchland. It can delay the Wrath a turn, yeah, but it's rare that turn one Vial leads to the turn five kill because Vial lends itself to a slower game plan. It's really Lackey that makes you fear the quick kill, and you still have Plow/Factory/countermagic.
Right, but Wrath still leaves the Vial perfectly functional, ready to pump out uncounterable Matrons into uncounterable Ringleaders. Plus, you aren't just worried about dying, you're worried about overwhelming card disadvantage.

Landstill taps out only to reset the baard.
That is not true. Landstill often taps out to play Standstill, or at least it is able to with FoW. Holding onto it often makes it dead before you can play it with counter backup.

The only time that's really going to hurt you is if your opponent untaps and plays either Armageddon or Goblin Ringleader.
And Survival of the Fittest, and a few other things. Leaving yourself completely open isn't a small issue.

Geddon basically kolds you. That does mean you need to hold off on your Wrath until you have permission up (Although depending on the number of cards your opponent has in hand, you can just Wrath, not play a land, then go back to square one if they decide to Geddon instead of playing a creature.) against WW decks. Fortunately, their clock is such that this is possible.
Turn six, or turn seven if you only have Absorb, assuming no Wastelands? And the Wrath isn't going to answer any equipment on the board.

Ringleader averages 2-3 Goblins drawn. You can use Factory and Plow to make your opponent drop another creature then reset the board over and over again to eventually trade your opponent right out of cards.
Costing you another sweeper, which you've already stated are hard to get enough of, instead of just a counterspell.

Absorb is better in this scenario because it negates reach and buys more time for the next threat.
Three life is not going to save you against a deck based on permanent threats. I'd rather have FoW here, because the Plow, Factory, and sweeper you're talking about will all cost mana, and potentially limit your options.

FoW is ONLY better IF you have the blue card AND you have them both when the Ringleader is played.
"Better" in this situation is quite the understatement.

Using Force of Will in conjunction with Standstill is like Probe without the kicker.
Yeah, except it costs only two and is a counterspell. Probe would be pretty damn good if it did that.

Standstill is only really good when you're not discarding from it.
Often, discarding one or even two is acceptable. And this is assuming your cards were all useful.

Granted Force is better at depleting your hand size, you really want to continue trading one for one and making land drops then playing Standstill when you're lower on cards.
That's good too, but in the early game you often want to get a Standstill on the board as soon as possible so it isn't too much work to make it work later.

Okay now can someone actually address the points I'm making rather then going "omg fow is the best card in existence noob."
I believe I've done that. Well, one more:

I'm not denying Force of Will is a good card in a vacuum. I'm saying that you don't need the permission on turn one often enough to make the loss of a card worth it, nor do you have the card to pitch often enough.
First of all, if his turn one play isn't worth two cards, hold on to the FoW. If he never plays anything worth two of your cards, you'll probably win anyway. Secondly, as mentioned, it isn't just turn one. It's every time you have less than WUU open. That can even apply in the late-game.

Destavi

09-02-2005, 08:41 PM

We should stop commenting on FoW being a good card in Landstill. This is the same thing that happened to the last still thread. Don't waste any more time discussing this. I suggest to the moderators to delete any more posts telling us to remove FoW.

Zilla

09-02-2005, 09:17 PM

No. It may be a highly contested topic, but frogboy has presented well thought out arguments to defend his position. You are free to disagree with him and explain why, but the discussion is not irrelevant. On the face of it, trading two cards for one in a dedicated control deck is a bad strategy, and, unlike Type 1, people do not regularly (or ever, really) win games on turn 1. Certainly frogboy's assertions fly in the face of convention, but his position is defensible and not off-topic. The discussion will not be removed from the thread.

Artowis

09-02-2005, 09:27 PM

Assuming the Goblins matchup (since its the one worth assuming) if you think trading 1 for 1 will help you run them out, you're dead wrong. If you assume that you can successfully give them untill turn 5 at best to reset, without adequite disruption that doesn't tap you out, you're wrong. If you think that the three life from absorb saves you a significant amount of time, you're wrong.

Few quick notes here.

Trading 1 for 1 isn't very hot, but if your trading with Warchief, Ringleader and Piledriver; it's generally going to have you coming out ahead. Goblin swarms don't work all that well or fast without KJ, Piledriver or Warchief in play.

Also an extra 3 life will usually buy you a turn or so in the Goblins match (Barring you letting a bunch of piledrivers stay in play). In some games that's obviously signficant.

3) FoW is IMPERATIVE in slowing them down enough for you to draw into your answers.

Nope. The only thing you -need- to force in this match is Aether Vial and this assumes you don't run any answer other than Disk/Vengance to it. Lackey is debatable depending on your hand, but everything else is answered by something that doesn't cost you 2 for 1. You can not use FoW and still win plenty of games against Goblins. So I don't really think it's 'imperative' at all.

As for FoW in Landstill in general.
I think it's a debatable point. There are way less cards to counter in current Legacy that can't be dealt with in other ways (Considering most decks are based on creatures and a small bunch of artifacts). Force is obviously helpful to the early game, but the card disadvantage is notable when your only form of draw is Standstill. It's a card I'd like to get rid of, but until a solid general answer card can be put in it's place, I won't be dumping it.

Absorb isn't that card, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

umbowta

09-02-2005, 10:14 PM

Now, I could swear that I posted in here about FoW. Perhaps the post was deleted for some reason??? However, the fact remains that, to some extent, I agree with Frogboy. FoW only saw play, in the beginning, as a way to stop turn one kills in type 1. Decks in legacy dont tend to do anything unrecoverable, by a good control deck, on turn one. That said, I would honestly prefer to have 8 hard counters that don't require me to pitch a card and lose life before I have 5 freakin mana.

Yes, it was deleted for its flippant tone and ambiguous meaning. This one will remain. - Zilla

kimberley

09-02-2005, 10:17 PM

No. It may be a highly contested topic, but frogboy has presented well thought out arguments to defend his position. You are free to disagree with him and explain why, but the discussion is not irrelevant. On the face of it, trading two cards for one in a dedicated control deck is a bad strategy, and, unlike Type 1, people do not regularly (or ever, really) win games on turn 1. Certainly frogboy's assertions fly in the face of convention, but his position is defensible and not off-topic. The discussion will not be removed from the thread.
Despite i have my problems with frogboy's positions in that UR landstill thread i consider this discussion extremely interesting.
It reveals how close Landstill's current set of tools and general strategy is related to possible MWC tactics, which is a fascinating fact.

frogboy

09-02-2005, 10:24 PM

Destavi, DJ Catchem: Look, if you're not providing relevant commentary go away. If you think I'm wrong, do what Zur did. If you have nothing productive to say, stop cluttering up the thread.

Zur: You actually make a good point about Absorb costing three colored. I'm considering switching to Dissipate or Forbid for that reason.

ATS is in a different situation than Landstill is regarding it's low blue count. For one thing, ATS' permission is largely geared towards playing a turn two Survival and then keeping the Survival on the table. That's a generalization, but work with me. Basically, ATS' blue cards are almost all secondary to FoW for the purpose of pitching a card, since they're redundant or not as important as sticking SOTF. Too, with Survival in play one can just go find Mystic Snake or Gilded Drake or some other useless card depending on the matchup and toss it in the bin.

The "real threats that are hard to deal with in other ways" are limited to what, Solidarity's comboing off and Armageddon? Armageddon, incidentally, is somewhat negated by Crucible. I'm not denying it's a huge kick in the junk, but it should be really hard for any deck to have a threat larger than two power on the table when they play Armageddon.

You're not afraid of Geddon when you can recover from it or your opponent plays it with no board position and two or less cards in hand. Obviously it's something you'd prefer to not have resolve, but at that point it's usually mostly an annoyance.

Green aggro? I dunno, Elves and junk like that. The point was aggro decks that aren't Goblins or playing Armageddon. Those mostly don't exist, so w/e.

Re: No other control deck having a better draw engine: Intuition/AK into Deep Analysis. Actually playing 4x Fact or Fiction. Decks with TfK supplementing their draw engine. Hulk Smash, for example, completely destroys you because Standstill is simply not that good in comparision to their twelve or so draw spells on top of Brainstorm.

Well, okay. Let's say we make the switch to Dissipate/Forbid. There's not a whole lot of "must counter" spells in the traditional sense of the word from Goblins. Basically Warchief and Ringleader are the ones that really matter. Most of the rest of the deck is gravy. It's true that your opponent has Matron, but Matron costs a turn of tempo, so you get to make another land drop, and it ends up being a wash. Port slows your opponent as well as you down if they're actually casting creatures, so it's only really dangerous in conjunction with Vial. I'm not really sure why you would play a nonbasic on turn two or three unless your hand was like double Tundra or something, so Wasteland is somewhat negated there.

Explain to me how Disenchanting Vial is horrible for tempo. The absolute worst scenario for it is they have it on the play, and play a Warchief on turn three when you only have two lands up and feel you have to counter it rather than Disenchant the Vial, which is probably the wrong play in any case, because you're probably going to either Plow the Warchief or reset the board in the near future.

Granted, Genesis in the yard puts you in the uncomfortable position of needing to race. However, RGSA can really only pump out one threat a turn, and they play like 21 lands. Recurring stuff with Genesis and casts it is going to take a long time, and you can use your other permission and removal to just sit there and make land drops until you Decree the face.

The assertion that Goblins kills by turn five every game is facetious. It implies the control player kept a hand without Plow or Wrath or was exceedingly unlucky. I probably have more experience with Goblins than anyone else on this board, so I know what I'm talking about here. The deck simply isn't as fast as people think it is barring a ridiculous draw. As far as Vengeance and Survival goes, I'm not really sure why I wouldn't have the lands in play. I guess Tradewind Rider might be relevant if you weren't like, playing resets and Plows and using permission to keep him inactive.

You don't really need to wait for seven mana to play Fact. You just wait until whatever they do on their turn is irrelevant and play it eot. Or you could wait; ramping up to seven lands isn't that difficult.

Again, your point about WUU is well taken in regards to the Landstill mirror. I actually cut Wasteland from my build, so I have twenty colored sources, putting me way above the norm and keeping my fear of Wasteland low. Besides, Wastelands in the mirror typically are aimed at manlands unless someone is viciously colorscrewed.

Again, this whole "Lackey smashes you" thing isn't really that big a deal. It essentially means you need to draw either a STP or a third Wrath effect to negate it.

When was the last time you saw stormbased combo or Belcher doing anything in regards to being something you really need to be ready for for a tournament?

Sharpshooter gets trumped by the hardcasting Decree plan. Survival decks are actually really mana light once you realize that most of their creature based acceleration is going to die. It takes them a lot of time to recover from mass removal effects to the point where they're rebuilding faster than you can stop them.

I don't play Conclave. My mana base is: 3 Mishra's Factory 4 Strand 4 Tundra 2 Plains 11 Islands. Let's not go into how that's different at this time. Suffice to say that nonbasic hate is not that big of an issue.

I was being facetious when I said to play Circle of Protection: Red. Sphere of Law is by far superior in both the Goblins and burn matchup. (Chill's better against burn but worse against Goblins. Goblins is more prevalent. Work it out.) Do note that if you play a Wrath and then a Sphere of Law, you will almost always win the game.

Usually when you want to play Fact and can only back it up with a single counter you go ahead and play Fact in response to them doing something irrelevant. (Irrelevant is defined as playing any spell that you can answer with something other than permission.) Or you just rawdog it out there and eat permission if it's what you have to do.

You need to understand that of all the spells currently played in Legacy, there are very few that ruin you that you can't answer unless you counter them. Armageddon, Ravages of War, and Solidarity combo are the only ones that immediately come to mind. You can play around Armageddon, and Solidarity isn't that prevalent. Even if it is, Landstill's matchup with Solidarity was bad before you cut Force of Will. If Solidarity's metagame presence concerns you, Landstill isn't a great deck choice to begin with. It is winnable postboard, but it's never going to really be favorable. You still have the Arcane Lab/Rule of Law hate if you want to run that, or you have a better counterwall.

Why would you tap out to play Standstill? It's almost like doing so means you have to discard when they break it next turn, meaning you net two or even one card from it instead of three. Granted you'd want to do so in combo matchups, but other then that you want to sit there and trade and then play Standstill on an empty board in the midgame.

For Goblins to have a clock that is such that you need to tap out for a reset, they either have to have a Piledriver with a lot of friends around, or a Lackey, and you need to not have drawn Plows in multiples, and they need to negate your Factory. (Admittedly, doing so is usuallly not a problem for them.) Otherwise you can just sit on it and take some damage until they finally play the Ringleader and you counter it or you reset the board and they play the Ringleader and you counter it. If they commit all the goblins they just drew to the board, you can smash them. If they run them out one at a time, you can trade and then play Fact or trade and force them to overcommit so you can smash them.

I do give you tons of credit for actually making a good argument.

Nightmare: Um, one for one trades with Goblins is a huge kick in the junk for them, because the nature of their two for ones usually involves destroying other creatures, which really just doesn't happen in this matchup very often. If they just play a two power creature you'll sit there and take some damage and then you'll smash them with a 5/5 or a few 4/4s or a billion 1/1s. Again, saying Goblins kills you on turn five is facetious. See above. If you run out a Tundra that you don't tap the turn you play it, you should reconsider playing a land at all.

Saying that because you lack a blue card to pitch means you played wrong is simply not true. You have eighteen blue cards. Again, pitching Standstill is very rarely correct. This leaves fourteen. That's not many at all. Yeah, you can pitch your draw, but then you have the dual problem of being behind on cards and having no way to get more. Basically you only have seven cards you really want to be throwing to FoW: your other FoWs and your Counterspells. Pitching your draw hurts, but can be done. There's still not a lot to go around with that. Are you saying you'd rather Force of Will a Lackey rather than Plow it? Or are you saying you'd rather have more answers? I'm contending that you don't need them.

umbowta:
Posted on Sep. 02 2005,1:26
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WTF? Force of Will sucks sooo bad. The only reason it saw play when it was printed was to stop shit from killing you on turn one. Legacy decks don't do anything important on turn one. The only reason I still play it is because DCI says I can't play Mana Drain. Hell I just gave away three FoWs to some kid. They're just uncommons anyway.

I was actually going to tell you off for that, but then you said something meaningful and backed it up.

kimberley: We can argue on the other thread. But yeah. Permission in this format is really only good because of the combo that exists, and sort of because of other control decks.

DJ Catchem

09-03-2005, 08:19 AM

My tone may have been a tad flippant, but I'm not kidding about the Belcher thing. Well, not completely, anyway. Let me revise and say "combo".

Solidarity is on the outskirts of Tier 1 right now...in fact, the only thing keeping it off that much-vaunted pedestal is an overall lack of T8 finishes. No one argues the fact that it is potent; in fact, it may very well be a valid arguement that it is the best deck in the format.

Now, Landstill *needs* access to Force Of Will simply because combo in general will roll over it if it can count Landstill's blue sources (multiple blue and white sources in the case of Absorb, which has been pointed out already, is almost impossible to piece together in a reasonable fashion in a deck running at least eight colorless mana sources.) before making the choice to go off or not. If I'm piloting Solidarity, I can reasonably look at a Landstill player with a full grip of cards, and count the untapped blue sources to figure out the worst-case scenerio of how many counters I need to be able to play around. Add Force to the mix, and I suddenly have no idea whatsoever. In fact, I took Solidarity to a tourney this week that I ususally bring Landstill to, and got to play a person running Landstill. On one turn, he was able to counter four different things I tried to do, and then two turns later, another three because of Force. Force is the best counterspell in the format for many reasons; it's free, so it's fast, it's a hard counterspell, it can be paid for in two different ways, and most importantly in my book, it totally screws up the information a deck using it gives to its opponent. Force is *crucial* in Landstill...Landstill simply can't be dominant in this format if it can't get an active counterspell untill it's second turn at earliest.

On a casting cost tangent, there have been arguements for Mana Leak over Counterspell due to the fact that, again, Landstill can have issues putting together UU in the early game. Add W to that, and forget it.

I really feel combo is one of the key reasons Force is needed. To speak to GodZilla for a second, Belcher could put Grim Tutors in the place of Spoils, pack eight discard effects, and probably be very viable (if not still jank as hell) against the field if it didn't have to worry about Force. That would open the door to tons of storm and cog-based combo as well that simply can't compete right now.

--->DJ

frogboy

09-03-2005, 02:53 PM

The problem with that theory is that Landstill can't really effectively counterwall High Tide anyway. It only has eight counters and High Tide has forever to sculpt their hand and win. Indeed, if Force is moved to the board you actually get a more powerful counterwall in games two and three. Even then, it's still not going to be a very good matchup for you. You need to be able to throw down a Lab (Or Mage) to really have any hope of winning. It is, however, true that Force of Will may help you resolve the lab (assuming you have the blue card) so the point is valid.

It is not realistic to expect Landstill to play seven of it's eight permission spells unless that game went on for way too long.

Mana Leak is inferior to Counterspell because decks can just pay for it in the mid to late game and it becomes rather dead.

Let us note, however, that Landstill as it presently stands has a bad matchup with combo anyways; it usually can't counter the second bomb and isn't going to be able to put enough pressure on to prevent the opponent from drawing another one or just sculpting their hand until it's ridiculous.

Storm based combo is not a reason to play anything in the format at this point in time. There are no lists that are really dangerous or prevalent. If and when that changes, the inclusion of Force of Will in the maindeck or sideboard would become more relevant, because you would indeed need to be able to have permission on turn zero. Post a Belcher list in another thread and such discussion might be applicable.

As I said before, High Tide is a bad matchup anyways; it does weaken slightly at this point when you cut Force, but realize that you're going to be hitting alllll your land drops pretty much. When your opponent plays High Tide you should have access to at least six mana. That's two counterspells showing, and you're not likely to have more in hand early in the game anyways.

Mad Zur

09-03-2005, 03:05 PM

ATS is in a different situation than Landstill is regarding it's low blue count. For one thing, ATS' permission is largely geared towards playing a turn two Survival and then keeping the Survival on the table. That's a generalization, but work with me. Basically, ATS' blue cards are almost all secondary to FoW for the purpose of pitching a card, since they're redundant or not as important as sticking SOTF.
That's mostly correct, but cards like Lackey, Vial, and Survival on the other side of the table can put Landstill in a very similar situation to ATS. All of Landstill's blue cards are secondary to stopping those threats, just like ATS's blue cards are secondary to Survival. Standstill does nothing in that situation, Counterspell is almost useless, FoF is too slow to matter, and Brainstorm, while probably being the best of them, is just not reliable enough to play instead of pitch when facing down one of those cards. I do agree that Landstill's blue card count is a problem, and I would love to see more, but I don't think it's enough of a reason to cut FoW.

Too, with Survival in play one can just go find Mystic Snake or Gilded Drake or some other useless card depending on the matchup and toss it in the bin.
Also correct but as we just discussed, FoW's importance is in getting the Survival down in the first place.

The "real threats that are hard to deal with in other ways" are limited to what, Solidarity's comboing off and Armageddon? Armageddon, incidentally, is somewhat negated by Crucible. I'm not denying it's a huge kick in the junk, but it should be really hard for any deck to have a threat larger than two power on the table when they play Armageddon.

You're not afraid of Geddon when you can recover from it or your opponent plays it with no board position and two or less cards in hand. Obviously it's something you'd prefer to not have resolve, but at that point it's usually mostly an annoyance.
When you have a total of four answers to Lackey, and three answers to Vial and Survival, they become hard to deal with. Consider that, in the majority of situations (statistically), you won't have the answer to any of those cards on the first or second turn. Just four slots going to FoW actually makes it quite probable that you will have an answer to any given one of them. You can beat those cards without FoW, but you are making it much more difficult and much less likely for very little gain.

Re: No other control deck having a better draw engine: Intuition/AK into Deep Analysis. Actually playing 4x Fact or Fiction. Decks with TfK supplementing their draw engine. Hulk Smash, for example, completely destroys you because Standstill is simply not that good in comparision to their twelve or so draw spells on top of Brainstorm.
Intuition/AK draws as many cards as Standstill, for over twice as much mana. Landstill could play any of these if it wanted to, but it doesn't - that's because it has a better option.

Well, okay. Let's say we make the switch to Dissipate/Forbid. There's not a whole lot of "must counter" spells in the traditional sense of the word from Goblins. Basically Warchief and Ringleader are the ones that really matter. Most of the rest of the deck is gravy. It's true that your opponent has Matron, but Matron costs a turn of tempo, so you get to make another land drop, and it ends up being a wash. Port slows your opponent as well as you down if they're actually casting creatures, so it's only really dangerous in conjunction with Vial. I'm not really sure why you would play a nonbasic on turn two or three unless your hand was like double Tundra or something, so Wasteland is somewhat negated there.
You seem to be ignoring Lackey and Vial now. You can't just ignore something because you can answer it. You're not expected to.

Explain to me how Disenchanting Vial is horrible for tempo. The absolute worst scenario for it is they have it on the play, and play a Warchief on turn three when you only have two lands up and feel you have to counter it rather than Disenchant the Vial, which is probably the wrong play in any case, because you're probably going to either Plow the Warchief or reset the board in the near future.
They spend one mana, you spend two, and they get one or two free creatures.

Granted, Genesis in the yard puts you in the uncomfortable position of needing to race. However, RGSA can really only pump out one threat a turn, and they play like 21 lands. Recurring stuff with Genesis and casts it is going to take a long time, and you can use your other permission and removal to just sit there and make land drops until you Decree the face.
You might be able to race, if you have plenty of permission, plenty of spot removal, and then the Decree. But again, it isn't about might. Your expected win percentage goes down dramatically in this game because you didn't have FoW.

The assertion that Goblins kills by turn five every game is facetious. It implies the control player kept a hand without Plow or Wrath or was exceedingly unlucky. I probably have more experience with Goblins than anyone else on this board, so I know what I'm talking about here. The deck simply isn't as fast as people think it is barring a ridiculous draw.
I made no such assertion. However, if they do not kill you by then, and you aren't countering their best spells (because you let Lackey or Vial resolve), they will probably be able to bury you in card advantage, such that even after the Wrath, you're still in a horrible position because they have a turn to play out all the extra threats they've drawn with Ringleader.

As far as Vengeance and Survival goes, I'm not really sure why I wouldn't have the lands in play. I guess Tradewind Rider might be relevant if you weren't like, playing resets and Plows and using permission to keep him inactive.
Alright, if you do that, you're spending cards out of your hand every turn. Your opponent is just spending Squee every turn while gaining advantage with Genesis and Witness, and making sure that the creatures in his hand are the best in the givin situation at any point in time. If you manage to get rid of the Survival eventually, that's great, but you'll be so down on cards that your chances of winning are laughable. Sure, it could happen, but if you had FoW, it would have been much more likely.

Again, this whole "Lackey smashes you" thing isn't really that big a deal. It essentially means you need to draw either a STP or a third Wrath effect to negate it.
Third Wrath? What does that mean, you already have two? That's quite an assumption. But Wrath doesn't answer Lackey anyway, because it will wreck you for three turns or so, which puts you in an awful position.

The bottom line is: needing to draw an STP is completely awful. FoW gives you twice as many outs, making a loss to Lackey significantly less likely.

When was the last time you saw stormbased combo or Belcher doing anything in regards to being something you really need to be ready for for a tournament?
Agreed.

I don't play Conclave. My mana base is: 3 Mishra's Factory 4 Strand 4 Tundra 2 Plains 11 Islands. Let's not go into how that's different at this time. Suffice to say that nonbasic hate is not that big of an issue.
That goes a long way toward explaining why you don't like Standstill.

I was being facetious when I said to play Circle of Protection: Red. Sphere of Law is by far superior in both the Goblins and burn matchup. (Chill's better against burn but worse against Goblins. Goblins is more prevalent. Work it out.) Do note that if you play a Wrath and then a Sphere of Law, you will almost always win the game.
Even so, my point stands: Running FoW in the board so you can make the combo matchups for game two as good as they used to be in game one cuts into your anti-red and anti-mirror sideboard.

Usually when you want to play Fact and can only back it up with a single counter you go ahead and play Fact in response to them doing something irrelevant. (Irrelevant is defined as playing any spell that you can answer with something other than permission.) Or you just rawdog it out there and eat permission if it's what you have to do.
Losing counter-wars over your big card advantage spells is a big deal. Resolving FoFs and the like is how you aim to beat Gro.

You need to understand that of all the spells currently played in Legacy, there are very few that ruin you that you can't answer unless you counter them.
Again, it's not a matter of can or can't. It's a matter of more or less likely.

Even if it is, Landstill's matchup with Solidarity was bad before you cut Force of Will. If Solidarity's metagame presence concerns you, Landstill isn't a great deck choice to begin with. It is winnable postboard, but it's never going to really be favorable. You still have the Arcane Lab/Rule of Law hate if you want to run that, or you have a better counterwall.
If you're not using your sideboard space on FoW, you can make the matchup favorable. It takes a lot of hate, but you have a lot of hate available to you.

Why would you tap out to play Standstill? It's almost like doing so means you have to discard when they break it next turn, meaning you net two or even one card from it instead of three. Granted you'd want to do so in combo matchups, but other then that you want to sit there and trade and then play Standstill on an empty board in the midgame.
You tap out for Standstill when you're digging for the removal/lands to play it or when you simply don't want to have to work to make it good later.

For Goblins to have a clock that is such that you need to tap out for a reset, they either have to have a Piledriver with a lot of friends around, or a Lackey, and you need to not have drawn Plows in multiples, and they need to negate your Factory. (Admittedly, doing so is usuallly not a problem for them.)
A Piledriver and one friend is a five turn clock, two friends is a three turn clock. Not a lot. Drawing Plows in multiples is unlikely.

Otherwise you can just sit on it and take some damage until they finally play the Ringleader and you counter it or you reset the board and they play the Ringleader and you counter it. If they commit all the goblins they just drew to the board, you can smash them. If they run them out one at a time, you can trade and then play Fact or trade and force them to overcommit so you can smash them.
So you either have them play the Ringleader prematurely (make a mistake), or you wait until at least turn six, assuming no Wasteland or Port, to play the Wrath (hopefully it is a Wrath, not a Vengeance). This is all assuming you will be able to counter Ringleader, which you will not it you didn't stop the turn one Lackey or Vial.

I do give you tons of credit for actually making a good argument.
I appreciate it.

midnightAce

09-03-2005, 03:07 PM

If FoW is indeed a suboptimal choice for UW Landstill, logic indicates there must exist another permission spell (Assuming everybody is on the same side on the fact that the deck needs 8 base counters.) that excells FoW, the next step in the evolution of the deck would be to find such replacement.

If such replacement does NOT exist, then FoW would still be an optimal choice fo the deck... wouldn't you say so?

dsg123456789

09-03-2005, 05:32 PM

I think that mana leak would be the next best counter, after Force of Will. Its mana requirements are not bad, so you can likely cast it turn 2, and it is decent until you can reach the wrath/vengeance point, which appears to be the direction of the Forceless landstill. I, however, will be continuing to run 4 Force of Wills, because answering a turn 1 lackey on turn 1 is more important than answering it turn 4 (because they have matron/ringleader or ringleader in that amount of time).

Mods, could you please move the Forceless landstill discussion to a U/W control thread, because the proponent of Forceless Landstill does not run more manlands than most other non-landstill control decks, and he doesn't run wastelands at all, meaning that his deck plays out in a different manner than Landstill.

Carlos El Salvador

09-03-2005, 06:15 PM

Statstical Anaylsis: (The point of the post will be to the end)
Alright, using MWS as my tool of choice... here are some numbers...
Just some three color land still build I'm tinkerring with, with 25 lands
Chances of having any four-of in a deck (At least one copy) 40%
After first card drawn:44%
Second: 49%
Third: 53%
So you have a little less than half of a chance to have at least one copy of a card. Now with some fancy math, lets see the chances you have of having at least one copy of any eight cards:
Starting hand: 65%
First Card Drawn:71%
second:75%
Third:79%
The odds go up by 25% when you look at it this way. So the odds of me having either a swords or a force of will in my hand to stop that turn one Goblin Lacky/Aether Vial are close to sixty-five percent, I like that a lot more than 40%. Or the 32% chance of having the disenchant.

Sure, they have a fourty percent chance of having the lacky, but sixty five for having the lacky or vial on first turn (Assuming both are at a four of.) Your answers when relying on only swords for lacky, or disencahnt for swords (Up to four, for simplicity sake) is 40%. This means that the situation will be in your favor 26% of the time (.4 *.65)
Comparativly, lets say you have four of each and they have four of each. This significantly improves your chances of having one of your four answers, giving you a 42% chance of having one of the right eight cards, before drawing. If you use a brainstorm in response, this shoots up to 51%! You should be able to answer aformented first turn threat against goblins almost half the time, barring card to remove for force and mana issues.

Zilla

09-03-2005, 10:23 PM

Mods, could you please move the Forceless landstill discussion to a U/W control thread, because the proponent of Forceless Landstill does not run more manlands than most other non-landstill control decks, and he doesn't run wastelands at all, meaning that his deck plays out in a different manner than Landstill.
The point of the thread is to discuss Landstill. While frogboy may be testing without Wasteland or FoW, he's still running a UW Control deck with Manlands, Decree, and Dragon as win conditions and Standstill as a draw engine. The deck is Landstill. Frogboy is testing without Wastes because Landstill's manabase is horrendously unstable and Goblins is successfully exploiting this weakness with Wastes and Ports. There's no reason to move this discussion; it's about Landstill and this is the Landstill thread.

vanele

09-04-2005, 02:11 AM

Frogboy your argument on removeing forces from your deck is strong but, the fact is forces also help in the psychological aspect of the match. When you force of will something early game your opponent usually decides to play a little more cautiously. (At least in my meta.) Having at least 2 cards in your hand even though you have no open blue mana can still have an effect of their card choice. It has the same effect of leaving 2 blue mana open. Also force works even better after you FoF and you take at least 1 blue card into your hand. If you do find force of will isnt what you wanna run, then at least run something more playable than absorb, perhaps forbid?

On an unrelated note, is there any sideboard tech against a green stompy deck? One has been dominating in my local meta, and i can not seem to get anything out fast enough against it. Perhaps hibernation but thats all i can think of at the moment. thanks in advance.

SARCASTO

09-04-2005, 04:29 AM

On the disscusion of removing force of will, I have seen a few people suggest that this isn't type 1, and decks don't win on turn one. This is false.

Though playing a turn one bomb spell, (lackey or vial or even nimble mongoose) doesn't win the game instantly it often becomes the reason that the game is won a few turns later. If they resolve a first turn lackey 90% of the time they will win if your not holding the swords. Even with all of your 4 mana answers, the amount land disruption, coupled with the inability for landstill to reliably get double white makes it lose the game. if the resolve a turn one vial or lackey, or creature that is good, you cant even play the decks draw engine (standstill) without first removing the threat.

Disscusion: Should landstill use one of the moxes to accelerate its game plan by a turn?

My friends and I have tested landstill a lot and are starting to think that one of the moxes might help the deck. Many times that landstill loses it was one turn away from being able to wrath, or do something else. With the inclusion of a mox diamond or chrome mox it will be able to speed it up a turn which will keep it more competative with blazing fast aggro (goblins), and tempo (gro decks).

Reasons to include mox

- Counter magic up on the first turn/ standstill on the first turn.

- Wrath/ disk a turn earlier (key when faceing little red men)

- If mox diamond included more color consistency (pitch a colorless land or a dual if they have wastes up)

- Mox diamond has synergy with crucible

- Mono blue did this in standard when it found that it was too slow to compete. The theory is that you can stand the immediate card disadvantage, because you can control the game better and gain back the cards later because it is a control deck.

Reasons not to include mox

- Card disadvantage in a straight control deck

- Bad synergy with disk/vengance

- May have to up land count if diamond is included

- Terrible when forced to mulligan

I think moxes should definetly be tried, I am just not sure what to cut for them.

Double-posts merged. - Zilla

dsg123456789

09-04-2005, 04:11 PM

I tested mox diamond as a 2-of in landstill a while ago, and every single time I drew it or had it in my opening hand I did not want it. Basically, you flood a bit on mana sources, have to cut a sweeper, take huge card disadvantage, and all you get is turn 1 counterspell, which still does not help against a turn 0 lackey or vial. I have not found a problem against Goblin's mana disruption, and I'll outline the manabase I use and the technique I use so that I can beat them:

First of all, you have to recognize that having an early counterspell is not as important as being able to wrath on turn 4. With this in mind, you should fetch basic plains until you can hit 2WW. The next point you have to recognize is that using your wastelands on their ports is slowing your mana development more than theirs. You want to have lots of mana at your disposal, and I would rather have a Ported tundra, 2 plains, and 2 wastelands than a tundra, 2 plains, and 1 wasteland. The reason for this is that being able to cast larger decrees mid-late game is important for winning the match. You can always waste later, but the mana-development rates are not changed by using a wasteland or not. Finally, here is my current manabase:

The reason that I went +1 plains -1 island is that in the matchups you want to hit UU you are not under mana-denial, whereas the matchups you want to hit WW you are under medium-heavy mana-denial, and so you would rather be able to topdeck and play a basic plains than a basic island. I have been able to post a positive pre-board against Goblins, both against builds like Josh Smith's GenCon top8 build and the Vial Goblin's kiki/pyromancer/jitte build.

frogboy

09-05-2005, 12:49 AM

Generally Wasteland on Port is the right play since the Port is basically like you missing your land drop except denying you colored mana or tapping down a Factory that would be really nice to block with. The mana denial aspect doesn't really change, but the colorscrew gets fixed. (Why would you ever want 2WW up instead of 1WWU is beyond me.) I cut Wastelands in general because I wanted more colored sources since having like fourteen blue sources means that you have to work to get UU up which is stupid. I cut Conclave because it's awful; beating with it against aggro costs a relatively huge amount of mana, and it's never going to go the distance against control decks.

Yeah, Mox is generally bad, both because pitching a card to play something you Vengeance away half the time is stupid and because you'd usually rather have the card in hand. If you want to play Chrome you can just cut land for them straight up, if you want Diamond you have to screw with your spell count.

I play a Windswept Heath so I have another basic psuedo-Plains. When you're under mana denial you obviously never play duals unless you absolutely have to and you run out basic Islands, then fetchlands, then basic Plains so you don't have WW in play and no Wrath. Getting an extra colorless is way easier than an extra W.

The psychological effect of FoW is basically "Hey, he's tapped out and can't stop me." If you play a FoW early game, your opponent would be right to play more aggressively, because it's unlikely you'll have two (and two blue cards) so early on.

Absorb is actually insane, it's just that it's not very good when you're getting Ported and Wasted out of existence, so Forbid or Dissipate or some other 3cc counter becomes correct.

Honestly, I don't Force turn one Lackeys anymore anyways when I'm playing Landstill; I play the Wrath and Force their Ringleader when I'm tapped out. Obviously you run into an issue if they just Lackey in the Ringleader, but you still end up untapping with them having no board, and if you lose from there you're terrible or unlucky. I only Force Vials if my hand is heavy on permission. (When it's not, I usually have a Vengeance or Disenchant.)

Mana Leak is awful because the entire point of the counter is so you don't die once you've stabilized and they topdeck something brutal. By the time you need it, they can pay.

That's mostly correct, but cards like Lackey, Vial, and Survival on the other side of the table can put Landstill in a very similar situation to ATS. All of Landstill's blue cards are secondary to stopping those threats, just like ATS's blue cards are secondary to Survival. Standstill does nothing in that situation, Counterspell is almost useless, FoF is too slow to matter, and Brainstorm, while probably being the best of them, is just not reliable enough to play instead of pitch when facing down one of those cards. I do agree that Landstill's blue card count is a problem, and I would love to see more, but I don't think it's enough of a reason to cut FoW.

Well, this is only sort of true. Against Survival, your opponent is spending a ton of mana using either Squee to find a beater and then cast it, or Genesis back beaters and then cast them. You have a lot of time in this matchup; use it. Standstill especially is good in this situation because you have a stable board position when they just have Survival, a few lands, and no creatures. Vial is more of an issue than Lackey is because it's usually harder to answer and makes the Ringleader uncounterable later in the game. That's the only card I'd Force every time.

Intuition/AK draws as many cards as Standstill, for over twice as much mana. Landstill could play any of these if it wanted to, but it doesn't - that's because it has a better option.

Look, I don't want to get into a huge debate here, but Intuition AK into Scroll for the other AK or Intuitioning for Deeps is a lot better then Standstill is, especially given that they're usually running Gifts and Fact and infinite pitch counters. (Yeah, they're a lot better in those decks because they tap out to draw a lot more cards than Landstill does.) You WILL get outdrawn in these matchups.

You seem to be ignoring Lackey and Vial now. You can't just ignore something because you can answer it. You're not expected to.

Well, I actually stopped considering Lackey a must-counter; I'd usually rather have the counter when I'm tapped out on turn four. I'm still split on Vial.

You might be able to race, if you have plenty of permission, plenty of spot removal, and then the Decree. But again, it isn't about might. Your expected win percentage goes down dramatically in this game because you didn't have FoW.

Well, let's say you end up Wrathing on turn five or six, because your opponent probably spent turn three Survivaling for Anger/Genesis/Squee/beatstick and you might have decided to take the hit on turn four or five. Let's say five. Okay. They play another creature; you should probably have a Plow by now (Come on, that's like, twelve cards not counting Brainstorm.) so StP the creature and drop Standstill. Now your permission is active (Note FoW wouldn't be optimal until the next turn in this case.) and you have removal and the Standstill. You're in good shape.

Third Wrath? What does that mean, you already have two? That's quite an assumption. But Wrath doesn't answer Lackey anyway, because it will wreck you for three turns or so, which puts you in an awful position

I almost always see two Wrath effects in a given game. Lackey is only a huge issue when your opponent has some stupid nut draw involving Lackeying out Warchief and dropping a bunch of Piledrivers. Otherwise you end up stabilizing somewhere between fifteen and eight life.

That goes a long way toward explaining why you don't like Standstill.

Actually, I don't like Standstill much because it's usually not that great in control matchups, mostly because your deck isn't that tuned towards control matchups. The card itself is fine, I just hate playing it when I'll have to discard. I hate Conclave because I don't like tapping three to Shock my opponent and letting them Stone Rain me with removal.

Even so, my point stands: Running FoW in the board so you can make the combo matchups for game two as good as they used to be in game one cuts into your anti-red and anti-mirror sideboard.

Losing counter-wars over your big card advantage spells is a big deal. Resolving FoFs and the like is how you aim to beat Gro.

I actually find I beat Gro by beating on their mana base with Wastelands (Yeah, I know, I cut Wasteland. I don't play against Gro that often.) and just murdering all their creatures.

They spend one mana, you spend two, and they get one or two free creatures.

Well, your turn two mana will often go to waste when they have a Vial out anyways, because it's rather rare they'll play a Piledrive as opposed to waiting and Vialing it in. Granted they do get the free guys.

If you're not using your sideboard space on FoW, you can make the matchup favorable. It takes a lot of hate, but you have a lot of hate available to you.

This may or may not be true; I havn't tested the Landstill/Tide matchup extensively. (Read: post board much) It seems to me on the surface that FoW is mostly good because it lets you Force their when you play Lab, and it's true that you end up wasting slots if you need to run a board here.

You tap out for Standstill when you're digging for the removal/lands to play it or when you simply don't want to have to work to make it good later.

I only tap out for Standstill if I'm resetting the board that turn and don't have permission. This is typically pretty late game. I almost never play turn two Standstill unless I mulliganed or something.

A Piledriver and one friend is a five turn clock, two friends is a three turn clock. Not a lot. Drawing Plows in multiples is unlikely.

Aside from Plows, you have actually countering the Goblins, Wrath effects, Decree, and Mishra's Factory. Playing three Goblins is like saying "Hey, nuke my board please!"

So you either have them play the Ringleader prematurely (make a mistake), or you wait until at least turn six, assuming no Wasteland or Port, to play the Wrath (hopefully it is a Wrath, not a Vengeance). This is all assuming you will be able to counter Ringleader, which you will not it you didn't stop the turn one Lackey or Vial.

Well, it's not necessarily a mistake to run out the Ringleader if your clock is slow and you don't have gas in hand. Similarly, I won't always Force a Lackey.

Okay, here be conclusions and stuff:

I did test the -FoW before I came in here. It was positive and made me stop hating playing the deck so I came in and posted it. I've done more testing and it was less positive. This is, honestly, mostly because of mana denial coming from Goblins than any other aspect of the matchup, specifically Rishadan Port. I've been considering running Teferi's Response in answer to it (God, three for one is nuts. Response was the printed answer for Port, too.) and I'm looking for other options.

The main time I've been wanting Force is for the time when you tap out on turn four. It's not nearly so much as the answer early as it is their answer to your forcing them into the midgame. Be it countering a Ringleader or not getting a Sphere of Law Disenchanted or whatever. I can also see how it would be good against combo (Although I'm not certain if it's that much better against High Tide except in the case of the Laboratory, which to be fair is probably a major point.) and maybe the mirror, in addition to freeing up sideboard slots. This is balanced with the lack of blue cards/two for one issue and the fact that FoW is pretty clunky in general in this deck. I'm going to go back to running it with an eye on upping the blue count and looking for a different way to not fear tapping out on turn four, and if I find something I'm going to probably end up cutting them again.

I'm going to slap anyone who says something along the lines of "gee so maybe FoW really is good after all who'da thunk it" because I think this line of thought was productive and also showed how FoW is mostly good in one or two instances. I still maintain it's not always correct to Force a Lackey, and can think of instances where I wouldn't Force Survival. It also brings to the surface the appalling paucity of blue cards to pitch in the deck. I also wouldn't have much issue with cutting FoW, and still might end up doing it again.

*gets off soapbox*

DJ Catchem

09-05-2005, 04:59 AM

Even then, it's still not going to be a very good matchup for you. You need to be able to throw down a Lab (Or Mage) to really have any hope of winning. It is, however, true that Force of Will may help you resolve the lab (assuming you have the blue card) so the point is valid.

It is not realistic to expect Landstill to play seven of it's eight permission spells unless that game went on for way too long.

Mana Leak is inferior to Counterspell because decks can just pay for it in the mid to late game and it becomes rather dead.

Let us note, however, that Landstill as it presently stands has a bad matchup with combo anyways; it usually can't counter the second bomb and isn't going to be able to put enough pressure on to prevent the opponent from drawing another one or just sculpting their hand until it's ridiculous.

Storm based combo is not a reason to play anything in the format at this point in time. There are no lists that are really dangerous or prevalent. If and when that changes, the inclusion of Force of Will in the maindeck or sideboard would become more relevant, because you would indeed need to be able to have permission on turn zero. Post a Belcher list in another thread and such discussion might be applicable.

As I said before, High Tide is a bad matchup anyways; it does weaken slightly at this point when you cut Force, but realize that you're going to be hitting alllll your land drops pretty much. When your opponent plays High Tide you should have access to at least six mana. That's two counterspells showing, and you're not likely to have more in hand early in the game anyways.
I think you missed the point of my post, but I'll speak to that later.

The problem with that theory is that Landstill can't really effectively counterwall High Tide anyway. It only has eight counters and High Tide has forever to sculpt their hand and win. Indeed, if Force is moved to the board you actually get a more powerful counterwall in games two and three.

Landstill can't effectively counterwall Solidarity. However, it loses a TON of steam in that matchup without Force. You're right about Force in the board giving you a more powerful counterwall games two and three...so why not leave it in and improve game one? Other posts have already proven the effectiveness of Force versus Goblins. It owns Enchantress. It owns...well, just about everything. Why leave it out?

It is not realistic to expect Landstill to play seven of it's eight permission spells unless that game went on for way too long.

In my above example, the Landstill player was running a deck tuned to beat the control mirror and Solidarity game one. He ran more than eight counters...including Absorb.

And I would have comboed him out turn four if he didn't run Force. Easily.

Let us note, however, that Landstill as it presently stands has a bad matchup with combo anyways; it usually can't counter the second bomb and isn't going to be able to put enough pressure on to prevent the opponent from drawing another one or just sculpting their hand until it's ridiculous.

THis was actually my first point in the above post. Now, append that last paragraph with "Things get exponentially worse without the utility of Force Of Will."

Storm based combo is not a reason to play anything in the format at this point in time. There are no lists that are really dangerous or prevalent. If and when that changes, the inclusion of Force of Will in the maindeck or sideboard would become more relevant, because you would indeed need to be able to have permission on turn zero. Post a Belcher list in another thread and such discussion might be applicable.

...This being the other point I was trying to make. Your arguement was for taking Force out of the maindeck. Mine was that combo, including but not limited to storm-based combo, would be far more relevant as a result. You basically just restated my point exactly in this paragraph.

I see where you're coming from, but I think you might be thinking a bit to fast for your own arguement. Don't get specific to any one deck, but think combo in general. my arguement is that combo gains massive advantage and strength in a metagame where control decks do not run Force Of Will. Discuss.

--->DJ

Zilla

09-05-2005, 05:56 AM

my arguement is that combo gains massive advantage and strength in a metagame where control decks do not run Force Of Will. Discuss.
I'll discuss it briefly, although it's a bit off topic because it's more of a general metagame discussion rather than specifically about Landstill.

Here's the thing: right now, Solidarity is the only widely prevalent combo. Landstill has a difficult matchup against it with or without Force of Will. The only thing really keeping Solidarity in check right now is the massive amounts of red decks running REB/Sirocco/Pillar.

You can point to Belcher and say that it would run rampant without FoW in the format, but a) there are a ton of aggro control decks in the format also running FoW (where it better suits their strategy), b) Belcher loses to itself 50% of the time, c) if Belcher ever did become prevalent and stable, it could still be hated out of the metagame by any deck able to support Null Rod (read: all of them).

Aside from that you have Storm combo (where FoW is pretty lackluster anyway), and again, loses to itself like Belcher does, and can be hated with simple cards like Pillar, Chalice of the Void, etc.

Then you have stuff like Doomsday or Salvagers, which can typically be hated pretty easily by any deck running Pithing Needles (again, that means all of them).

In short, combo isn't a real metagame concern right now (excepting Solidarity, which isn't that deterred by FoW), and until it is, I don't see it as a valid argument for or against FoW in Landstill. That choice should be made based upon the relative merits of the card itself as it relates to the deck's strategy in general.

dsg123456789

09-05-2005, 05:15 PM

Frogboy--you made an interesting point about Teferi's Response. I think that it merits testing in the sideboard (being that the maindeck is so tight) as a way to maintain the normal, crazy landstill manabase while being able to swap 2 counterspells for 2 cards that will save you from mana-denial lands post-board. I think that I will test a few of them in my sideboard, or perhaps something maindeck could be cut. 1 vengeance? 1 wrath? Those would hurt the aggro matchup a lot. Disenchant (some number)? Disenchant is important as an answer to many things, but perhaps going to 2 disenchants, 2 Teferi's Responses, and 61 maindeck cards could work...

Mhough

09-05-2005, 05:54 PM

I can't understand why you would cut wasteland I have won many games entirely because of crucible/wasteland. I also don't see the problem with the manabase for landstill I run the basic mana base of 24 lands 2 dragons and 99.9% of the time have the mana I need. I am still running disk over vengeance though (I have my reasons and can back this up if need be) so maybe this makes things a bit smoother for me.
I'm also not seeing problems against Goblins and other random red decks I just board in 4 chill and 3 pulse.

About FOW even though you might not need it turn one. Let's not forget it lets you tap out for Standstill, Crucible, Wog, Disk/Vengeance, etc.. without worrying about what they might play next turn or wether they will counter whatever you are playing. I think we will be giving ATS an advantage against Landstill in addition to combo by cutting FOW.

Also against Solidarity if it's a problem why not just dedicate 3-4 sb slots for Blessing. Really I know you can't play it if you draw into it but you can always brainstorm it back. Then you don't have to race them and only need to counter stifle if they wish for it. Just my opinion though.

frogboy

09-05-2005, 06:20 PM

Seven of twelve permission spells is still a ton. Even so, decks metagamed to beat Solidarity and the mirror have no bearing in a debate over FoW, because in that debate you accept the fact that Solidarity is a bad matchup anyways.

The thing about the Blessing plan is you look really stupid when your opponent draws their entire deck and Strokes you for forty or so.

Chill isn't that amazing against Goblins. Pulse is okay, but considering they can just hammer your Tundras it's only going to gain you four life a turn while tapping you out so they play more threats and murder you. This is especially true if you decide to play Disk for some awful reason.

What games have you won recently against the top tier (Defined as Landstill, Goblins, burn, and Solidarity) on the back of Crucible/Waste? Considering it's awful against two of the four, not very good against Goblins, and only decent against Landstill seeing as how they have Crucibles and ways to wreck yours.

I'm not really worried about Survival in general since A) no one plays it and B) you crush it anyways.

Again, the ONLY time I want the Force of Will is on turn four. That's it.

61 maindeck cards is wrong. Period. I cut Disenchants for the Responses; that's probably not that correct, but I didn't put much thought into it. Cutting a Wrath sort of defeats the point of trying to get around mana denial.

Mhough

09-05-2005, 07:29 PM

Since when is burn Tier one?

When did people quit playing Survival?

Yes the solidarity player could just stroke you for 40+ but not likely turn 4 wich gives you time to get the counters to stop stroke not to mention they can also just bounce your mage/lab and go off just the same or in response considering lab isn't hitting till turn 3. But yeah you're right it is a bad matchup and really isn't part of the debate over Fow but it's something that was being discussed.

Chill has done quite well against goblins for me. If I get it down turn two(considering I have Fow to stop REB) then manage to get a second one it's normally game. As for Pulse why would you fetch Tundras if you know they are playing wasteland?

The problem with your argument against wasteland is that people aren't just playing the 4 decks you mentioned and nonbasics are everywhere in my meta. To answer your question Welder,ATS,Sneak Attack, Gat, etc...

You may only want Fow turn 4. I happen to really like having Fow anytime I draw it. Especially anytime I'm tapping out I'd think if you're playing vengeance you'd at least want it turn 6 also. What about turn two when you play disenchant or standstill?
I just don't understand why anyone would want to cut it. It's the best counter in Legacy. Saying that this isn't type 1 as a reason to not play it makes no sense. I would play it in extended if it were legal.

Now on another note back to the discussion before this crazy talk of cutting Fow.

FOF does suck I cut it for intuition a long time ago and have really liked the change generally just getting 3 lands. But also using it to get whatever the hell I might need at the moment considering you don't play less than three of anything besides it.

frogboy

09-05-2005, 07:57 PM

Yes the solidarity player could just stroke you for 40+ but not likely turn 4 wich gives you time to get the counters to stop stroke not to mention they can also just bounce your mage/lab and go off just the same or in response considering lab isn't hitting till turn 3. But yeah you're right it is a bad matchup and really isn't part of the debate over Fow but it's something that was being discussed.

Yeah in the time you assemble like four counterspells they've sculpted their hand into the pure nuts that you're not going to be able to stop, ever. It's akin to the UW Scepter vs Desire matchup last Extended season - the long game favors Desire/High Tide because they have such massive inevitability.

Chill has done quite well against goblins for me. If I get it down turn two(considering I have Fow to stop REB) then manage to get a second one it's normally game. As for Pulse why would you fetch Tundras if you know they are playing wasteland?

Yes, obviously double Chill is the near-nuts against Goblins if they don't have a Vial in play. Assuming you don't draw two of your four-of by turn, say, four, and they Disenchant or REB the Chill, you're otherwise in bad shape, especially since you almost certainly will need to Disk or Vengeance away your own Chill at some point during the game. A single Chill is really not that big of a deal for Goblins.

If you don't fetch your Tundras you're casting Pulse all of once a turn, tying down three mana that could be put to better use elsewhere like in your permission while Goblins does the "HAY GUYZ I DRAW CARDS AND BASH" thing.

The problem with your argument against wasteland is that people aren't just playing the 4 decks you mentioned and nonbasics are everywhere in my meta. To answer your question Welder,ATS,Sneak Attack, Gat, etc...

You should be crushing all of those decks except GAT anyways, and GAT is still fine without Wastelands.

You may only want Fow turn 4. I happen to really like having Fow anytime I draw it. Especially anytime I'm tapping out I'd think if you're playing vengeance you'd at least want it turn 6 also. What about turn two when you play disenchant or standstill?
I just don't understand why anyone would want to cut it. It's the best counter in Legacy. Saying that this isn't type 1 as a reason to not play it makes no sense. I would play it in extended if it were legal.

Well, Extended is actually a faster format, or at least it is pre-Rotation, so FoW makes good sense there.

Do you like having Force of Will lategame so you need to keep five mana up instead of two so you can't do productive things like winning the game? Do you like having Force of Will early when you don't have a blue card? Did you not read the five pages of reasoning of why FoW isn't very good except in like two or three cases and have anything productive to say other that "it's wrong?"

Incidentally, turn two Standstill is almost always a bad play, so that's not a real good point. Turn two Disenchant only leaves you wanting FoW if they do something like mox Ringleader or drop a Warchief and inf men and you don't have removal.

FOF does suck I cut it for intuition a long time ago and have really liked the change generally just getting 3 lands. But also using it to get whatever the hell I might need at the moment considering you don't play less than three of anything besides it

FoF is insane, don't kid yourself. The only reason it's not very good is that whole tapping out not really being that safe thing. Intuition for any answer wrecks your lategame because now you only have one of that answer left in your deck. The deckthinning is something you only really want when you have like eight land in play anyways, and at that point you're almost certainly going to win. It's certainly awful if you're just using it to draw a land; Impulse is almost certainly 3489734897x better there. Or like, Fact or Fiction or something.

Since when is burn Tier one?

When did people quit playing Survival?

Since the summer started. Burn has actually been insane for some time. How good it is in a given metagame is usually dependant on how much hate people have in their sideboards for it at any given time, especially since it kolds Landstill and Goblins unless you actually bother to pack Chills.

Mhough

09-05-2005, 08:47 PM

"Well, Extended is actually a faster format, or at least it is pre-Rotation, so FoW makes good sense there."

Could you please explain to me why extended is a faster format than Legacy?

Maybe you missed the point about getting 3 lands with intuition they tend to be 3 factories with a crucible in play
so you end up gettting all your factories out. Also going for a wrath, a disk, and a swords will generally get rid of your troubles w/o screwing your late game. Besides unless they have massive draw if you can control the first 4 turns the game should be yours.

Again you are right the solidarity match up is bad the point is mage/arcane lab aren't going to save you anymore than blessing is everything you've said to argue blessing can be said against mage/arcane lab.

Chill does stop goblins I've used it over and over again to win.
The first reb gets countered they have less of a chance of drawing the second one before you draw a second chill considering you run brainstorm, standstill, and in my case intuition. I haven't seen a red/white goblin deck yet. And actually with an early chill they can't play enough threats that you need to disk/vengeance you can STP wrath or block with a Factory or a Conclave. To get rid of the few threats they can play.

Once you wrath you can start pulsing getting back to a comfortable life total making them start all over at wich time you should be in a much better position than them. Especially when you realize wog will take out numerous cards of theirs only costing you one card.

Burn sucks it will not make tier one it may be doing well in your meta for some unknown reason but it shouldn't be. It most definitely doesn't own landstill it might have a good game against Goblins but should lose to most everything else.
It's to easy to stop anytype of life gain and or disruption will own burn. I mean my god even Pox can beat burn.

Games where I drop turn two standstill I almost always win. I don't know why you would say this is a bad play. It's one of the best plays you can make. It's damn near an ancestrall turn 2 or 3. Why is this bad?

And again I have no problem drawing FOW anytime during the game.

So let me get your deck list right

You've cut wasteland, Faerie Conclave, Fow, you only run 3 Mishra's Factory. So you have 3 threats plus 2 dragons I'm assuming. You appearantly don't like dropping standstill early wich I can see with the lack of threats you play it can probably be a liability for you most of the time.
Why don't you just play u/w Control?

frogboy

09-05-2005, 10:28 PM

Could you please explain to me why extended is a faster format than Legacy?

Well, the combo is faster and a ton more consistant, and the fundamental turn is three as opposed to four.

Maybe you missed the point about getting 3 lands with intuition they tend to be 3 factories with a crucible in play
so you end up gettting all your factories out. Also going for a wrath, a disk, and a swords will generally get rid of your troubles w/o screwing your late game. Besides unless they have massive draw if you can control the first 4 turns the game should be yours.

Well yeah, I guess the whole situational tutor that takes three turns to be really good assuming you have a two-of in play is kind of good. Going for Wrath/Disk/Swords on turn three against Goblins is like here, have a Disk, be dead before you can use it. Wrath/Wrath/Wrath again, screws your late game.

Again you are right the solidarity match up is bad the point is mage/arcane lab aren't going to save you anymore than blessing is everything you've said to argue blessing can be said against mage/arcane lab.

Well, thing about that is, Blessing is useless when they sculpt their hand, and Lab sits there hosing them while they spend the better part of forever digging for bounce and playing it while you sit there with a couple counters and wreck them.

Chill does stop goblins I've used it over and over again to win.
The first reb gets countered they have less of a chance of drawing the second one before you draw a second chill considering you run brainstorm, standstill, and in my case intuition. I haven't seen a red/white goblin deck yet. And actually with an early chill they can't play enough threats that you need to disk/vengeance you can STP wrath or block with a Factory or a Conclave. To get rid of the few threats they can play.

Goblins isn't red/white, it's red splashing Disenchant. Almost every good list runs either a white or green splash to not get raped by Plague or Sphere of Law, and you have splash damage on your Chills and your Disks from that. They get eight outs to Chill, aside from Vial and actually like, paying for it. Chill isn't even that bad for Goblins to begin with. Your second Force of Will is likely to be awful due to that whole not having blue cards. You're almost never going to be blocking with manlands in the face of Wasteland and Rishadan Port.

Burn sucks it will not make tier one it may be doing well in your meta for some unknown reason but it shouldn't be. It most definitely doesn't own landstill it might have a good game against Goblins but should lose to most everything else.
It's to easy to stop anytype of life gain and or disruption will own burn. I mean my god even Pox can beat burn.

Burn wrecks Landstill. This isn't really in dispute. Even with Chill it's not that great. It also beats Goblins, and is considered a deck on the radar you should watch out for.

Games where I drop turn two standstill I almost always win. I don't know why you would say this is a bad play. It's one of the best plays you can make. It's damn near an ancestrall turn 2 or 3. Why is this bad?

Well, when you play turn two Ancestral you play it during your opponent's end step and then drop Moxen so you don't have to discard. When you drop turn two Standstill and your opponent immediately breaks it you almost always have to discard unless you play Force on something that may or may not actually be worth Forcing. It's infinitely better to trade one for one and make land drops then play Standstill when you won't be discarding.

You've cut wasteland, Faerie Conclave, Fow, you only run 3 Mishra's Factory. So you have 3 threats plus 2 dragons I'm assuming. You appearantly don't like dropping standstill early wich I can see with the lack of threats you play it can probably be a liability for you most of the time.
Why don't you just play u/w Control?

Decree of Justice is the best threat in Landstill. I play that. Factory happens to be insane in control mirrors. Wasteland happens to not be that good. Standstill is the best draw engine that doesn't eat up a ton of slots. It's not a liability because I don't do the retarded drop Standstill beat for like two discard some cards when they break it play, I do the reset your board Standstill go play.

Mhough

09-06-2005, 12:28 AM

Although this debate has been interesting to say the least you make no sense.

"Well, the combo is faster and a ton more consistant, and the fundamental turn is three as opposed to four."

This statement is ridiculous seriously there is more accel and better cards in legacy anything you can play in extended you can play in legacy better. Again this makes absolutely no sense. Goblins can easily kill turn 3, so does burn, Most combo except solidarity combo's turn 3 wich even solidarity can. Why are you under the impression that turn 4 is the fundamental turn in Legacy?

If goblins actually board in 8 cards against you they aren't going to be nearly as hard to beat every card they bring in is taking a threat away. Again I'm not having a problem against goblins and especially not burn. I'm sure there are many Landstill players on here that would say the same.

Since when do goblins have a good late game anyway??? btw crucible is a 3 of in my deck and generally see's play every game. So using intuition for factory is quite common. Even using it for wrath,wrath,wrath can be crucial. Late game really doesn't matter if you're gonna die before you get there.

Aracane lab costs 3 if you draw it by turn 3 they will probably go off in response or FOW it seeing as you're tapped out and don't run FOW you're screwed. How does lab hose them when at the eot they play cunning wish get a bounce spell and go from there. Also they generally only play 1 spell a turn to sculpt their hand so isn't lab useless at that point also. Blessing doesn't even need to be drawn to be effective. And they are forced to wait until they can stroke you for an insane amount or send 4 freezes at you.

See the thing is with playing standstill turn two you've probably already forced or plowed something, so you're not likely to have to discard and even if you have to pitch a land or 2 it's ok you still have card advantage.

Decree is good, best threat I don't know if I'd go that far but were talking 6+ mana to be effective at that point you could just play dragon.

Could we actually see the deck list you're running?

frogboy

09-06-2005, 12:47 AM

This statement is ridiculous seriously there is more accel and better cards in legacy anything you can play in extended you can play in legacy better. Again this makes absolutely no sense. Goblins can easily kill turn 3, so does burn, Most combo except solidarity combo's turn 3 wich even solidarity can. Why are you under the impression that turn 4 is the fundamental turn in Legacy?

It's the turn on which control plays Wrath and combo is expected to win. You can't play Mind's Desire or Vampiric Tutor in Legacy. Cephalid Life had a turn three goldfish.

If goblins actually board in 8 cards against you they aren't going to be nearly as hard to beat every card they bring in is taking a threat away. Again I'm not having a problem against goblins and especially not burn. I'm sure there are many Landstill players on here that would say the same.

Yeah, but considering that their Incinerators and Sharpshooters are largely dead anyways, they have like six free cards to bring out, then an SCG and a Fanatic and their threat density is essentially out the Lackey into SCG nut draw. You're probably the only Landstill player on the board who would say they don't have a problem with burn decks.

Since when do goblins have a good late game anyway??? btw crucible is a 3 of in my deck and generally see's play every game. So using intuition for factory is quite common. Even using it for wrath,wrath,wrath can be crucial. Late game really doesn't matter if you're gonna die before you get there.

Since people started playing Ringleader and Matron. Intuition for Factory is godawful slow none the less. Screwing your late game when the only way you win is to get to the late game isn't a good strategy, it's a good way to waste ten minutes and draw the match.

See the thing is with playing standstill turn two you've probably already forced or plowed something, so you're not likely to have to discard and even if you have to pitch a land or 2 it's ok you still have card advantage.

See the thing is you probably really didn't play Force or Plow on turn one most of the time, and on the draw you still have to discard even with a Plow. Given that you kind of need to eke out every bit of CA you can get with this deck, you shoot yourself in the foot by discarding and thus denying yourself.

Decree is good, best threat I don't know if I'd go that far but were talking 6+ mana to be effective at that point you could just play dragon.

Dragon means you have to tap out on your mainphase whereas Decree is an instant speed uncounterable cantripping Fireball to the face that you can use repeatedly.

Mhough

09-06-2005, 10:53 AM

"Since people started playing Ringleader and Matron. Intuition for Factory is godawful slow none the less. Screwing your late game when the only way you win is to get to the late game isn't a good strategy, it's a good way to waste ten minutes and draw the match"

Ok so my point is replacing FoF with intuition how would FoF be any better in this situation? You would die before getting wrath assuming you would get one on with fof and casting it turn 5. Plus there is always the possibility of getting 3 lands with a fact anyway and nothing else you need at the moment at least with intuition you are getting exactly what you need when you need it a turn earlier than FoF.

In almost every matchup you will end up playing something the first two turns except for maybe solidarity. You want to force, counter, or disenchant survival, force or plow lackey, force or disenchant vial, force or plow a face down angel played off of ancient tomb and a mox, etc... so no I don't agree w/ your argument against a turn two standstill but obviously we aren't going to get any further with this.

frogboy

09-06-2005, 02:07 PM

I still don't Force Lackeys if I have a Wrath in my hand, but apparently no one else does that.

There really just aren't that many two and three drops that are worth countering. The only one that's really relevant is Survival. More to the point, if you're killing something on turn two, you're not playing Standstill until like turn three. Turn two Standstill is fine if you've mulliganed or something, but if you're going to end up discarding, and you usually are, it's wrong.

Well, usually a turn five Wrath still gets it done against Goblins, so you play your Fact or Fiction and dig deeper. If you kept a hand without Force, Wrath, Brainstorm, or Plow, you probably should have mulliganed. So assuming you play Fact, you've seen sixteen cards at least by turn five. Not seeing a Wrath is a statistical anomaly. Saying a draw spell isn't that great because you could draw nothing is...dumb. You also could Fact into the nuts.

Intuition-as-tutor isn't very good because you can't afford to deplete your resources.

thecomedian

09-06-2005, 03:08 PM

Mine eyes have seen the horror of the burning of the Source
It makes me think of Lava Dart only significantly worse
The flames are fanned and hot
Continue this will not
The mods are logging on

Yeah...
No Seriously, I think Frogboys been hitting this pretty close to home. Control is all about Card advantage, and Forcing a Lackey is card disadvantage, whereas plowing it isn't. And As for the whole draw engine thing, Standstill really is an awful draw engine. It's just it's 4 slots for a full blown draw engine, as opposed to intuion for Ak/deeps is 9 plus support(brainstorm and Merchant scroll) Fact or fiction is good, but it really is quite slow, and the only thing slower is Crucible. Because if you want to drop crucible and be able to counter/plow/disenchant/standstill, then you're really waiting until turn 5. Wrath is your freind, but it doesn't win you the game. You run 3-4, and vengeance is REALLY slow, so you need swords and countermagic to back it up. Combo is also an issue, but since when does Solidarity go off on turn 3? I was always under the impression that it was turn 4-5, and that it was stilll fast enough to race Goblins. If it is turn three, then Stifle and Chant are your only real disruption. If it's turn 4-5 then Arcane Lab is insane because the opponent can't counter war with you, and they run what, 3 wishes and a couple of chains/truths?

However, there are a couple of important two and three drops beyond Survival, namely Goblin warchief, intuition, meddling mage and Isochron Scepter. There are others and some of those don't always matter, but the turn 2 is quite important for several decks, especially since the format has gone to having a curve of 1/3.(turn 1 prospector/whatever, turn 2Chrome Warchief, turn 1 brainstorm, turn 2 Dark Ritual Intuition)

ISOCHRONIC_SCEPTER

09-06-2005, 03:24 PM

Ok, well it seems as though alot of people are posting their decks for analysis and meta-gaming. My deck could greatly use both. I started out with U/W scepter chant and slowly it got reformed into U/W landstill. I tested several builds of U/W landstill and even debated a possible splash of different colors, but i was most comfortable with the ability of typical U/W. I have been playing this deck for almost a year and i make changes around the meta almost every week when i lose horribly to a certain matchup. I normally play at the weekly legacy tournament at Millenium in Rochester. This deck has helped me climb to 5th in the rating standings for legacy in Rochester. This deck also got me a decent 17th place finish at Big Arse II at Altered States. Not to shabby for my first big Legacy tourny outside of Millenium. The version of U/W landstill I ran at BAII didnt run wasteland because i was an idiot and didn't realize how good crucible wasteland was until after being devastated by it at BAII. Here is my current list.

Swords to Plowshares= This one doesn't really need a description. 1 Mana/best creature removal in the game. 4 maindeck is a must. It helps so much against those key creatures, such as an end of turn STP on their goblin lackey= Kick in the junk.

Brainstorm= Amazing card draw. You get to peer at your top 3 cards and but ANY two back! You can really abuse brainstorm if you use it with your fetchlands. If you know what your opponent is playing and you have dead cards in your hand... Just brainstorm them onto the top of your library then flush them away with a fetch land. Brainstorm will always have a place in control decks.

Mana leak= A great card in my opinion. Leak is usually a nice card to have in your opening hand. With an expected heavy goblin appearance at GP Philly, mana leak can really put the stops on some of those annoying early-game goblins such as warchief/ringleader/matron Etc. You also gotta love that feeling when you leak a spell when your opponent decides to play a spell before they play their land for the turn. In other matchups, mana leak can also be stylish. Against a control deck you can draw out your oponents counters and Mana leak them when they dont have enough lands to pay. Overall good card.

Standstill= ..... insane card draw and the reason the second half of this deck's name is still. if they break standstill, you just drew three more cards your opponent will cringe to when you play them. If they don't break standstill, you commence man-land smashing ands decree cycling. It's a win win situation in most cases. Sweet card.

Force of Will= ... Again, an obvious card to play four of in any control deck. a free counter which pretty much gives you more leeway if you need to tap out. The card is swell even when u hard cast it late game. This card is nuts.

Decree of Justice= Morphling on crack is what this card is. I started with Morphling/Exalted, then i switched to Decree, and Decree of Justice trumps both of them. Great synergy with humilty and standstill. DoJ sneaks right under standstill and will most likely force your opponent to break standstill giving you 3 more cards. and with humility.. you make masses of 1/1's on one turn and your opponent casts one fat 5cc 1/1 a turn. Seems like it's in your favor. You don't even lose a card because it cycles. End of turn cycling of decree for a handful of tokens will normally bring a frown on your opponents face. This card isn't even bad if you hardcast it. 4/4 flying angels= superior to most other creatures. There's nothing like smashing face with 1/1 soldiers and 4/4 angels with wings.

Counterspell= A sweet card indeed. 2 mana counter spell. Traditional as it's gonna get. A set of these are generally a must in most control decks. Counterspell can really put a hold on many decks dependant on a few cards. All of the counters and disruption serve well against combo decks.

Fact or Fiction= Should this card have been unbanned? I don't know, but I love it. The unbanning of this card and the banning of mana drain gave me the idea to try to make a control deck.
This card is just insane. 4 mana draw engine is what this card is.
Fact or Fiction is ALWAYS good. Even if the 5 cards revealed are ass, at least you aren't going to top-deck them now. It is a great for card advantage/filtering, or searching for that wrath, or StP, or any other card key to your survival during a match. In many cases, End of Turn Fact or Fiction can mean game over for your opponent. If you are both in top-deck mode or both have few cards in hand, fact or fiction can really swing the tide of a game in your favor. Regardless of what your opponent does with the two piles, you benefit. This card is good enough if a good player separates the piles. If you are playing against a bad player, this card is even BETTER. Nothing beats when your silly opponent makes piles of 4 and 1 and you don't even have to
hesitate when you take the pile with 4 cards in it. insane.

Wrath of God= Great mass removal card. I really like Wrath of God. it can really devastate goblins or any creature based deck that extends their hand on to the board for an early win. A Wrath of God when they have 1 card in hand can often times mean game over if you can maintain card advantage over them.
I chose this card over disk because disk often times is too slow and it is easier to get rid of, whereas Wrath of God can only be countered. I am also considering testing disk due to the meta-game expected at GP Philly. I might actually run both Wrath and Disk if they fit together. Overall, Wrath of God is a great piece for this deck considering it wipes away all creatures for 4 mana. And to put the nail in the coffin... they can't be regenerated. Take that Troll Ascetic and Spectral Lynx.

Humility= You gotta love this card. 4 mana all creatures become 1/1's and lose all abilities. This card is nuts against goblins and survival decks, or creature based decks for that matter. This card has great synergy with Decree of Justice. They're 1/1's anyways before humility hits. Humility usually damages your opponent.. not you. I'm sure some of you are thinking doesn't this hurt your manland beats? It actually doesnt really, because if you have multiple mishra's factorie's out, they are the biggest things on the board. The factorys can pump eachother up, just not themselves when Humility is in play. So your 2/2 factory can just eat up anything that comes your way. As for conclave
i suppose it just remain's a 1/1, but its still a beater and a blocker. With crucible out, these manlands can wreak havoc on your opponent when humility is in play.

-=Land discussion=-

Island= These produce blue, and I run blue in the deck...

Tundra= An obvious choice seeming as how my deck is U/W and Tundra's produce U/W. This card fixes color problems quite quickly, and is a must in this deck.

Mishra's Factory= A great card. It produces mana/attacks/blocks/pumps other factories/pumps itself... All in one! Perfect for this type of control deck. It can block that early lackey and it can provide a beatdown that can often land your opponent's life total to 0 if you can keep control of the game. Blocking a creature then tapping to pump itself up to a 3/3 is also never a bad play. It can absorb early goblins and early beats by other decks with creatures in them. This card can also be nice when humility is out. If you have two factorie's and humility in play, you can use your other land factory to give +1/+1 to your attacking/blocking factory.. and you now have the biggest creature on the board. An overall great card with many options and much flexibility.

Wasteland= Control player's nightmare and Control player's best friend. We enjoy dishing it out, but we don't like receiving it. I have no idea why I didn't run this card at BAII. I really think my chances at top 8 would have been greater had i been running wasteland like every other control player there. I was one game shy of T8, and looking back I know for a fact Wasteland would have helped me out a ton in almost every matchup. This card will see alot of play at GP Philly. You're not gonna see many good decks without duals and other non-basics with the exception of solidarity and kids running their mono red goblin build. Wasteland is great to stall your opponent a land and draw a card for your turn before they can play another land. Wasteland is also sweet with Crucible of Worlds. Every turn you can pick off one of those dualies or one of those pesty man lands. This card is just great. If you know your opponents deck and you use wasteland right.. you can really mess their color's up and you can do some serious damage which could win you the game.

Flooded Strand= U/W fetchland that can go for the colors you need and it can filiter your deck out of lands which will result in better chances of top decking something that is not a land. Flooded strand also works well with brainstorm. If you don't like your brainstorm you can just fetch for a land and shuffle your library in the process. I also enjoy using this card with crucible.
Fetching a land out of your deck every turn is quite nice when you are trying to build up for a fat decree or just to filter your deck out. Nice card.

Plains= ... my deck runs white and this card gives me white!

Faerie Conclave= Another man land beat down machine. Except this one has wings! Yes.. it does come into play tapped, but that generally doesn't pose a problem for me unless it's my only land or if i want to brainstorm or something but i have no other blue sources to play. This card is great in many matchups. Against other control decks... i can often draw out their StPs on my factories and decree dudes and i can swing faerie in for the win. It's a 2/1 and it flies over factory and alot of other creatures. It's a really nice card.

-=Sideboard Discussion=-
(Remember, these slots are easily subject to change depending on the meta-game)

Crucible of Worlds= I love this card. Nothing like abusing your oppoent's mana base with wasteland. waste after waste after waste until there is nothing left for them to play on. If they avoid wasteland and go fetch for basics... Crucible is still nice. A recurring mishra's factory can be a pain in the rear for many decks that are trying to send big beats in. Each turn you absorb the damage with factory and then play it again the next turn. Fetchland abuse with Crucible is also nice. Thinning out your deck of lands is always a good setup for potential top decks and bif fat juciy decree cycling.

Powder Keg= A nice utility card that can pull you out of many tight situations. Popping the keg for 0 is great against opposing decree tokens and manlands. Popping it for 1 or 2 can be really useful against an oncoming goblin rush. Keg is just a nice card for board because it is helpful in many situations.

Annul= An excellent sideboard card. I gotta pack these against Survival decks. Keeping survival off the board is key for me to win.. This card is also nice sometimes against mirror control decks. Crucible often can decide the match.. so annul is nice to have to keep that damn crucible away from you. And it is nice against random affinity and belcher and stuff like that.

Stifle= A nuts card in alot of matchups. Great against control/ solidarity/fetchlands/. Most decks have stifle targets and stifle is just an overall good card to keep handy in your sideboard. Stifling storm or decree or fetchlands is never a bad play normally.

Rule of Law= Pretty much my board against solidarity/spring tide. If this resolves and their chain of vapor doesnt resolve.. i normally end up winning. Along with stifles coming in, i can at least put up a fight with solidarity pretty. One time i played against a random enchantress deck and brought in the Rule of Law's and they owned him. It was fun.

Remember.. All sideboard slots are very flexible and are tweaked frequently to fit the current metagame.

-=Matchups=-
( I haven't written down testing results or anything because I didn't know that i would be doing this thread. I will give you a general summary of my matchups and I'll try to get up numbers ASAP.)

Goblins= 70%-30% your favor. StP/Wrath/Humility are all really nice against the red gobbies. And random counter and disruption can give them card and board disadvantage. An end of turn StP followed by a standstill is tough for goblins to beat with all of the card drawing. You have to watch out for vial tho. Aether vial turn 1 can really hurt you. I side in powder kegs to help deal with 1-2 mana cost goblins and vial itself. This matchup vary's but generally i am fairly comfortable going up against goblins. I don't lose often to it.

R/G Survival Advantage= 50%-50% give or take some percents. Again... these are estimates.. not actual numbered results. This matchup can go both ways. I'd say it is pretty even. Their burning wish can pose a problem if they resolve ruination or tsunami. They can tempt my counters out with survival of the fittest and other good cards i can't let slip under the radar. I haven't had alot of testing against the deck. The main survival deck i play against is Dave Price's. Ive bashed him, hes bashed me, and we have both won and lost really close matchups. I consider him to be one of the better survival players in legacy so it's always nice to play against him and see how well my deck can handle survival.. Humility is really nice in this matchup. humilty and wrath can allow you to gain an upherhand with a nice fat decree of justice. Standstill is also nice if you are going first and you have a force of will in your hand to make sure you can keep survival off even after you draw 3 cards. Again... this is a tight matchup.

Mirro Match Control= 60%-40% your favor. For some reason i do fairly well in the control mirror. Don't get me wrong.. it is a hard matchup and it requires much thinking and all 50 minutes of the round. Against control.. you need to out play them and out beat their decreees and manlands with your decrees and manlands. Often times this matchup comes down to who gets out crucible first and who misses the fewest land drops. Land is very critical in this matchup. If you get stuck on land early and your opponent keeps dropping those lands.. then the game doesn't look good for you. I am quite pleased with my results against other control decks. My sideboard is well suited to take on a mirror. Stifle/annul/powder keg/crucible/ are all nice cards when playing against the control mirror.

Solidarity= 40%-60% their favor. This is a tough match up. I haven't had much testing against the deck because only two people I know play the deck. One plays it casual and the other has ran it tournament a couple of times. I can beat my friend casually normally, but there are those games where he overwhelmes me with untap spells and just brain freezes/strokes the hell out of me. At Millenium however, I have lost to brainfreeze every time i have played against it .. which is 2-3 times. Even with Rule of Law and Stifle.. they can still pull that win off in response or if they manage to counter my Rule of Law with one of their 4 Force of Wills. It is great though if you can resolve Rule of Law. That slows their game pace down ALOT .. which makes you more comfortable. It gives you alot less to worry about and you just need to watch out for chain of vapor and bounce spells. I need more extensive testing against this deck to determine actual accurate results as to how my match up goes with solidarity.

Bruised Weenie.dec= 55%-45% your favor. Yes. It is the infamous Phil.dec/Bruised weenie. I have had quite good testing with this deck seeming as how I ALWAYS play against Phil every single time I go to Millenium. Each week I have to prepare to play against him. This match up is pretty even I'd say, but my extensive draw is what gives me the edge if he can't kill me before I stabilize on 4 lands. But an early duress followed by a priest or something on an equipment usually signifies game over unless u have a removal card at the right time. Once we sideboard, I would say he is more favored against me. Armageddon and Pithing needle do not sit well with this deck at all. He draws my counters out on mages and jitte's and such.. then boom! He slaps me across the face with a duress followed by an Armageddon. If Armageddon resolves.. you lose. This is a tight and fun matchup. If you can Fact or Fiction when he is low on cards, you are pretty good to go.

( There are many other decks, but I just posted some of the ones I had in mind and decks that i felt would be seen in more metas. More will be posted in the near future.)

-=Conclusion=-

Ok.. Well I have finally finished my first topic ever on the source.
I really like how this deck has progressed over the months of testing and changing. I hope to continue to tweak it and to bring it to Grand Prix Philadelphia. Any suggestions or help would be great. I am far from the best landstill player... and any advice from experienced landstill players would be greatly appreciated. Please post freely about this deck because I want an honest opinion and possibly other builds you might have in mind. Thanks alot

-=Greg=-

( This post was repeated because it was closed in the Open Legacy Discussion.) Please feel free to post about it in this thread. Thanks.)

frogboy

09-06-2005, 03:34 PM

However, there are a couple of important two and three drops beyond Survival, namely Goblin warchief, intuition, meddling mage and Isochron Scepter. There are others and some of those don't always matter, but the turn 2 is quite important for several decks, especially since the format has gone to having a curve of 1/3.(turn 1 prospector/whatever, turn 2Chrome Warchief, turn 1 brainstorm, turn 2 Dark Ritual Intuition)

Prospector into turn two Warchief against Landstill is retarded, because it's like instantly two for oneing yourself for a very mediocre game. Warchief isn't usually a must-counter. Neither is Meddling Mage. No one plays Isochron Scepter or Intuition in large amounts.